Crowns of the Kingdom
by Karalora
Summary: When a vengeful villain attempts to turn Disneyland's 50th Anniversary from the Disney Family's greatest triumph to their greatest defeat, it's up to Mickey Mouse to set things right and save his many friends from a fate worse than death!
1. Chapter 1

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 1: Best-Laid Plans

There are some cases where no amount of preparation seems quite enough. All the planning, all the precautions, all the checklists and troubleshooting and second-guessing…something might still go wrong. It tends to induce a sort of low-grade neurosis.

It was a state of mind that Mickey Mouse was growing quite accustomed to as the launching of Disneyland's 50th anniversary celebration, the Happiest Homecoming on Earth, drew near. This was the most important event the park had seen since…well, since Opening Day; everything had to be _perfect_. And there was so much to do, so many opportunities to invoke Murphy's Law!

Fortunately, all his friends were pitching in to make the celebration a success. Whatever their failings might be, people like Donald and Goofy were reliable in a pinch. So with less than an hour to go, as item after item on the final checklist came up ready, Mickey actually felt more-or-less on top of things.

But just to make _sure_…

"Mickey, you worry too much!" Minnie giggled at him, radiant in her princess gown. "Everything's going to be fine."

"I'm not taking _any_ chances," he piped, taking the opportunity to buff some of the brass buttons of his bandleader uniform. "Everything has to be just right! I want to make this something Walt would be proud of!"

"No problem there. No matter what happens, it couldn't possibly be any worse than Opening Day," Minnie pointed out. "Remember how much went wrong then? But we made it."

"I guess you're right," Mickey sighed with a fond smile. "But we've come a long way since then. I'd hate to think we didn't learn anything in fifty years."

"We've learned plenty. And Walt _would_ be proud." She leaned over and gave Mickey a peck on the cheek, a gesture that never failed to thrill him. "Now, I've got to go prep the opening shift, per _your_ last-minute instructions…boss. I'll see you again soon."

Minnie set off at a gentle jog toward the Main Gate. Mickey watched her, almost overcome with appreciation and affection for his long-suffering lady. As sensible as she was pretty…he'd never have made it this far without her. He could say the same for any of his closest companions.

One of whom was currently tumbling into Central Plaza from Tomorrowland, tangled in about sixty yards of used packing tape and yelping with every bounce. Knowing Goofy, that meant he had succeeded admirably at his assigned task.

As Goofy thudded to a halt against a bench, Mickey stooped over him. "Hi there, Goofy. Did you finish stocking all the golden mouse ears hats?"

"Ee-yup!" Goofy grinned, none the worse for being wrapped in sticky plastic. "First I packed the racks of the Mad Hatter on Main Street, and then I stuffed the shelves of the Mad Hatter in Fantasyland, and then I crammed the cupboards of the Hatmosphere!"

"Great job, old buddy!" Mickey said with an encouraging thumbs-up.

"Oh, I almost forgot!" Goofy added. "I ordered a thousand extra spools of white thread for the stitchin' machines, too!"

"Stitching," Mickey mused. "That reminds me…" He whipped out his cell phone and punched the number for Donald Duck, who was putting the final touches to the decorations elsewhere in the park. At the duck's raspy greeting, he said "Donald, did we ever manage to get it across to Stitch that he absolutely, positively should _not_ be destructive for a change?"

An undecipherable burst of noise crackled out of the receiver. "Donald? Donald, you're breaking up. I can't make out…wait, is that static or is it your voice?"

"It's my _voice_, you impossible little…" Donald trailed off into unintelligibility again, which was probably just as well. Steam began trickling out of the receiver end of the phone.

"I'm sorry, Donald," Mickey apologized. "I didn't mean to upset you. Wanna try again? I'll listen more carefully this time."

That seemed to mollify Mickey's quick-tempered co-star. "Not to worry, Mickey-ol'-pal. Lilo said she'd keep a close watch on him. And just in case, I scheduled an extra maintenance team to follow him around, and I requisitioned spare parts for everything!"

"Gosh, Donald, you're the best!" Mickey replied. "Keep up the great work! See you soon!" He ended the call and heaved a huge sigh of relief. They were actually going to pull this off! Next to him, Goofy managed to wriggle out of the tape and get to his feet. "Looks like everything's going to be all right after all, Goofy,"

The lanky dog gave Mickey a friendly clout on the head. "See? Didn't we keep tellin' ya everything would work out okay? You worry too much, Mickey."

"So I've heard," Mickey replied, rubbing his head. Goofy's friendly clouts were often harder than he meant them to be. "I just can't shake the feeling that I've overlooked something. It's probably just nerves. Oh, and Goofy?"

"Yes, Mickey?"

"_Throw that away!_" the mouse exploded, pointing emphatically at Goofy's discarded cocoon of packing tape. "Any minute now, guests are going to start pouring through that gate, and the first thing they'll see is a huge sticky mess! Have you lost your _mind_?" He stood snorting for a moment while Goofy cringed.

"Gawrsh, Mickey, I'm awful sorry!" Goofy drawled, near tears.

Mickey instantly regretted his outburst. He shouldn't have blown up like that—especially not at Goofy, who was the most sensitive and impressionable person he knew and who _always_ tried his very best, no matter what. And he _had_ done well. And it was only a lump of packing tape that would take mere seconds to clean up. Mickey softened and let his ramrod posture sag. "Sorry, Goofy, I didn't mean to be so hard on you. I guess I just cracked for a second. Don't worry about the tape; I'll clean it up. You go clean yourself up." He winked and added, for good measure, "See ya real soon!"

Guilt assuaged, Goofy put on the most serious face he knew how and snapped a salute before loping away under Sleeping Beauty's Castle, headed for his own home in Mickey's Toontown.

Ah…the Castle. Even wrestling with a wad of packing tape almost as large as the trash can he was trying to stuff it in, Mickey couldn't help but beam with satisfaction at what had been done to Disneyland's most famous landmark. First it had been repainted, with colors just slightly brighter than tradition and enough fine glitter mixed in to make the building's surface sparkle in even the faintest light. Then the walls and turrets had been embellished with banners and draperies in gold and royal blue, and with dozens of giant jewels, fist-sized and larger, in deep rainbow hues. A blue and gold mouse-eared Anniversary Plaque, one of fifty throughout the park, had been placed of the center of the archway. And finally, best of all, the towers had been crowned. Five giant golden crowns, each a unique design representing a decade of Disneyland history and evolution from its humble but ambitious beginnings to the spectacular showpiece it was today.

"Take a look, Walt," Mickey whispered as though the long-departed creator of the Magic Kingdom could hear, and see. (But then again, if the old boy's shade had taken up residence anywhere on Earth, it was on the premises of his magnificent labor of love. And if not, well, Mickey had long been of the opinion that the park itself had developed or acquired a spirit, a consciousness-of-place, like a hamadryad in an oak forest.) "Your legacy…I hope you like what we've done with it."

"Mickey!" came Minnie's shout down Main Street. "Five minutes till showtime!"

"Great!" he called back. "Get everyone together in Central Plaza!"

By then, dozens of animated characters were beginning to gather of their own accord. Half a dozen Princesses, escorted by their respective Princes, strolled down the path encircling the Castle moat, chattering about whether they should stand in chronological order of their movies' release, or alphabetically by first name, or so that their gowns made a nicely graded spectrum of color. Dumbo and Peter Pan swooped over the Castle's turrets playing a game of aerial tag, the former sporting a new gold-sequined collar that caught the early morning sunlight to blinding effect…and in the upturned rim of his hat, a slightly airsick Timothy Mouse. Through the Adventureland gates padded Simba and Nala, side-by-side, followed by an unusually relaxed-looking Tantor and his passengers Tarzan and Jane. Sheriff Woody, on the other hand, preferred to walk alongside his horse Bullseye as they and his sidekick Jessie passed through from Frontierland. His "best rival" Buzz Lightyear was not so humble, soaring from Tomorrowland with his rocket boosters on full blast.

Despite himself, Mickey gulped with apprehension. So many eyes would be on him as they kicked off the Happiest Homecoming! Eyes, no less, belonging to people whose opinions he greatly valued.

Raucous staccato barking caught his attention, and he turned toward it just in time to be bowled over by a battering ram in the form of a tawny dog that immediately covered him in slobbery canine kisses.

"Pluto!" he greeted his beloved pet, breaking into a fit of chuckling at the tickling sensation of the dog's over-zealous slurps. "Okay, pal, okay, I'm glad to see you too. Down, boy! Sit!" Pluto, as obliging as he was enthusiastic, left off his affectionate assault. He even straightened his coonskin cap with a clumsy paw.

Mickey righted himself, turned to further check the progress of the arrivals, and found himself face-to-face with an enormous red-and-black skirt. This was topped by an ample bosom over which glowered the homely face of the Queen of Hearts.

"Your Majesty," Mickey greeted her with a perfunctory bow and a sheepish grin. "Uh…glad you could make it!"

"But of course," she cooed, batting her eyelashes. "I wouldn't dream of missing a gala occasion such as this! Never you fear, my dear Mr. Mouse—you'll be seeing my face at _all_ the important events!" She patted her bun of unruly black hair coquettishly and sauntered off to join the rest of the Alice in Wonderland party at their appointed spot in front of the Castle drawbridge.

"Mickey!" gasped Minnie, who had just arrived after notifying everyone of the short time. "You invited _her_?"

"Of course not," Mickey said in a low voice. "I knew better than to invite any…" He dropped his voice even further. "…_villains_. But you know them—some of them just love to turn up anyway." A quick glance around revealed that of that unsavory crowd, only the Wonderland Queen had crashed the gathering. "It looks like she's the only one, at least. It could be a lot worse—we can probably convince her to behave herself. She's really more of a blowhard than a blackguard, you know what I mean?"

"I do," Minnie agreed, peeking at her watch. "Oh, my—less than two minutes to go! Everyone, take your places! And step on it!"

The latest arrivals, including a spacesuit-clad Donald and a freshly scrubbed Goofy dressed to the nines in his Indiana Jones-style leather jacket and fedora, scrambled to get to their assigned spots while Minnie counted down the seconds remaining to them before the opening of the Main Gate, checking off the roll list at the same time. Mickey wiped beads of sweat from his brow. The tension in the air was palpable, like a strong electromagnetic field. The Southern California breeze felt surprisingly cold.

"Twenty!" Minnie chirped. "Nineteen…eighteen…seventeen…" She broke off suddenly, looking up at the sky. Mickey realized it at the same moment—the clear field of blue was darkening as the wind picked up. The crowd of characters was suddenly abuzz with murmurs of "What's going on?" and "Is this part of the show?"

A frigid gust blasted Central Plaza, sending characters ducking for the cover of larger or furrier characters. The sky had turned a deep black-indigo color, giving the daylight a lurid, unnatural-looking quality. Forks of lightning the sickly color of marsh gas danced about the cloudless heights; a few dove down to strike the Castle moat, sending up plumes of steam and spray.

"Mickey!" Donald shouted over the growing noise of the wind. "It's a freak storm! We have to get everyone to safety!"

Before Mickey could reply, a _huge_ bolt of lightning struck the Castle itself! The resultant thunderclap threw everyone to the ground, and sparks rained upon the moat and drawbridge. As the stunned, confused characters dared to open their eyes, a shocking sight met them. A woman—of sorts—stood on the Castle's main parapet, directly over the Anniversary Plaque. Skirts as black as a raven's underwing flowed over the bricks like poisoned water. Twisted horns rose above a stern, coldly attractive face that was the same color as the lightning. Long fingers gripped a tall staff topped by an evilly glowing orb.

Recognition swept across the assemblage like a rustling wave of the sea, leaving gasps and cries of outrage and horror in its wake. Mickey's gloved hands flew to his mouth as his eyes bulged. But he bit back his shock and fright in favor of righteous indignation. "Maleficent! What are _you_ doing here!"

The Wicked Fairy looked down her nose at him—an easy thing to do, from her elevated location—and feigned ignorance. "Why, whatever do you mean? I am merely attending the Happiest Homecoming on Earth," she replied coolly. "Such is my right as a member of the 'Disney Family,' is it not?"

"No, it is not!" Minnie barked. "_You_ weren't invited!"

"Oh, dear," Maleficent said with a dreadful calm. "And I was so hoping that my invitation simply…went astray, as these things so often do. But if I am being shunned after all, then I simply don't know what I'll do."

The total lack of emotion in her voice was much more unsettling than any amount of rage or spite. Her opposite numbers from the cast of _Sleeping Beauty_, the Good Fairies Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, looked particularly distressed. They knew better than anyone—even Princess Aurora herself—what sort of mayhem Maleficent was capable of when she felt slighted.

"One would think," she continued, sweeping her gaze over the huddled crowd, "that those responsible for organizing these events would learn from the mistakes of the past, and not commit such thoughtlessness, such callous disregard for the feelings of those of us who happen not to measure up to some pretty little ideal. Petty discrimination of that nature practically _begs_ reprisal, wouldn't you agree…_Mickey Mouse_?"

"Don't…you…_dare_," Mickey hissed, every syllable measured for maximum defiance. "I won't let you do anything to ruin this! _We_ have all worked too hard for it!"

Maleficent's eyebrows shot up, allowing the light from her staff to glint ominously off her widened eyes. A smile quirked the corners of her painted mouth. "So," she said eagerly, almost hungrily. "The little Sorcerer's Apprentice wishes to take on the Mistress of Evil? How delightful."

Mickey's hands balled into fists. "You may be powerful, Maleficent, but I—"

"_You!_" the Wicked Fairy spat, suddenly irate. "You are nothing compared to me! You've been spoiled, Mickey—spoiled by your scripted shows with their contrived happy endings! It has made you arrogant, blind to your own true weakness! And I…I am weary of being portrayed as the impotent stooge doomed to defeat at the hands of Good!" Abruptly, she was calm again. "There is no script here, little mouse, and this is not taking place in your imagination. Your personal Utopia, your 'Magic Kingdom,' comes to an end here and now."

As if on cue, several of the assembled heroes, through with cowering, charged the mocking figure on the Castle balcony. Mulan, her restricting dress notwithstanding, pulled her sword and began scaling the wall in a series of nimble martial arts maneuvers; Aladdin and Quasimodo, though unarmed and untrained, did much the same. Peter Pan and the Genie took a more direct route. Robin Hood nocked an arrow and carefully aimed.

None of them got very far. "_FOOLS!_" Maleficent bellowed, stabbing the stones with her staff in one hard, sharp movement. A shockwave flung outward from the point of impact, shaking the climbers loose into the moat and sending the flyers tumbling backward. Robin's arrow wobbled uselessly away into the nearby trees as he lost his footing and his grip on the longbow. All those still on the ground were freshly rattled. Maleficent's fury was an enormous hand pressing them to the pavement.

"As if any of you is fit to stand in my presence!" Maleficent ranted on. "Watch well, Mickey Mouse, and despair! For your 'happy homecoming' shall never come to pass!" She began to chant, a simple quatrain in iambic tetrameter that was the Fairies' preferred pattern of magical recitation:

"Long years of insult I redress

Excising years of his success

Awake, o Sky, my loyal pawn—

Let night consume his golden dawn!"

With that, the evil sorceress flung her arms upward, gripping her staff in both hands. As slowly and inexorably as the march of Time itself, she began moving it in broad circles, as though the shadowed sky were an immense, topsy-turvy cauldron that she was stirring. And perhaps that was indeed the case, for her motion was echoed above. A swirling phenomenon, neither clouds nor wind, opened over the Castle like an evil eye, casting harsh ultraviolet light onto the horrorstruck characters below. Wider and wider the vortex yawned, though its true size was impossible to judge as there was no way to gauge its distance…not that space and dimension had any meaning in connection with that aberrant thing. And, with a screeching as of tearing metal, the hole in the sky began to draw things toward it.

The gold and blue draperies flew off the Castle and disappeared into the blacklit void, eliciting screams from the onlookers. The Anniversary Plaque swiftly followed, ripping loose from its fastenings. Though it missed her by mere inches, Maleficent didn't even seem to notice. Her face was twisted in triumphant glee at the nightmarish thing she had manifested, which was now plucking the sparkling gems from the Castle.

And then, as everyone had known they would since the hellish whirlpool began stripping the Castle of its adornments (though that made it no easier to watch), the crowns, the magnificent crowns began creeping upward along the turrets where they were anchored. The knowledge suddenly burst upon Mickey's mind that the rest had been only prelude, that _this_ was the main event on Maleficent's program, and above all, that _he must not let this happen._ As if it were a dream-Mickey acting, and not really him, he sprang to his feet and sprinted up the drawbridge, arms outspread, ludicrously wanting to take the Castle into his embrace, to protect it, though it was a thousand times his size.

It was futile. Even as Mickey reached the foot of the beautiful edifice, the crowns wrenched free and tumbled upward into Maleficent's howling vortex. Screaming in anguish, Mickey kept his eyes pinned to them, as though his gaze were a tether that could save them from oblivion. But they were lost to sight in an instant.

And even that was only the beginning.

To Be Continued…


	2. Chapter 2

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 2: Disneyland Devolved

Words are false things: having no reality of their own, they merely stand in for reality. That is why they so often fail to measure up to their task of description and codification. People know this intuitively, which is why life's starkest moments evoke no words at all, only raw, visceral reaction to the storm of experience.

Mickey Mouse's cry as Maleficent's unholy maelstrom stole the symbolic crowns from the towers of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, as it devoured them whole, was a wordless cry—purely emotive, every form of psychological suffering distilled into one long ululation. The sound might have broken even the Wicked Fairy's heart, if she had one, had it not been drowned out by her own laughter, swelling as the blister of a burn swells, surging as a tidal bore surges along a black river under the Full Moon, transforming along the way from mocking to maniacally merry.

With the disappearance of the last glint of friendly gold into the grotesque vortex, Maleficent let her arms drop, and the rent in the sky closed like the lid of Pandora's Box slamming shut on Hope. The force of its closing spawned ripples, eddies that curdled the very air like gelatin, so that it prevented movement, distorted light, hindered even the drawing of breath. The world was warping, twisting, splitting at the seams and being darned the wrong way around, swallowing itself and spitting itself out again in an endless Ourobourean cycle.

All the gathered Disney heroes, all Mickey's friends, shuddered and wailed in bewildered terror and woe. At first, that was all it was, so it was bearable. But then the lamentation began to take on a different dimension—deeper, sadder, somehow more ancient. It started among a few of the characters, and then spread, and spread, until more than half of them were holding their heads and moaning something much, much worse than mere loss. There was a pattern to those so affected, but it hovered just outside of understanding.

To see them, to hear them, these courageous ones, warriors and adventurers, reduced to simpering victims, was more than Mickey's heart could withstand. The Castle, after all, was only a structure, however grand its sentimental value. But these were _people_. His _friends_…being subjected to a grievous torment the details of which he could not discern.

As he had made to protect the Castle from Maleficent's spell—as desperately, and as uselessly—the mouse that started it all gathered himself to leap to their collective defense. He struggled against the jellified air, against the oppression of Maleficent's magic, lost for any strategy, knowing only that _his_ was the responsibility to thwart the evil—

—Maleficent's howls of mirth rose to a crescendoing shriek—

—and _then_ the world snapped back to normal—

—but the Central Plaza he arrived at was not the same one he had set out for.

* * *

On hands and knees at the foot of the Castle drawbridge, Mickey raised his head. His vision was blurry, but he could see that the sky was a clear shade of robin's-egg blue, and feel the gentle summer-morning coolness of the breeze. The discontinuity between _now_ and the devastating _then_ that was the last thing he remembered made him feel as though he were just awakening from a dream…no, a nightmare. The worst nightmare of his life.

_Had_ it been only a horrible vision? He was on the ground—had he blacked out from the stress of organizing the Happiest Homecoming and imagined the whole thing? There was no sign now that Maleficent had ever been present.

Except for a slight sense, so slight that it didn't quite register, not just yet, of _wrongness_…

…_this is not taking place in your imagination…_

"Oh, Mickey!" came a squeal of conflicting emotions. Suddenly, Minnie was taking him into her arms, and Pluto was ramming him urgently with his wet doggy nose, and nothing else in the world mattered, not at all.

Except that it did matter. "Minnie...i-is everyone okay?" He wished he could banish the tremor from his voice.

"I didn't stop to look," she confessed tearfully. "As soon as I could move again, I went straight to you."

That confirmed that the atrocity had, after all, occurred. Dreading what he would see as his vision cleared, he slowly wheeled about on all fours to look back up at the Castle, holding out one last shred of optimism that the horror had not happened, that the gems and hangings, and especially the crowns, would still be there, beaming Disneyland's half-century of success up the length of Main Street.

It was self-cruelty to do so. The marvelous structure was bare—still beautiful in itself, but only a shadow of what it had been mere…minutes…ago? Mickey's recent memories were confused; he couldn't tell whether his thoughts were of things only lately past, or long gone, or years ahead of him. In any case, the Castle was plain. Even the glorious glittering paint job had been stripped from it, leaving the duller pastels that were its normal ensemble.

"No," he whimpered, like a child denied a favorite treat but struggling to behave all the same. He kept waiting for the tears to come, but his eyes were shocked dry.

Flip-flopping footsteps in two different registers heralded the approach of Donald and Goofy behind him. (At least _they_ were still there.) "It gets even worse, Mickey," Donald rasped, heaving off his space helmet. "Look around you."

He did. It was…incomprehensible. "Minnie," he said, his voice nearly a whisper, "where is everyone?"

"I can't even begin to guess," was the reply.

Of all the characters who had assembled in Central Plaza, only a fraction remained! Those comparatively few were looking around them as though collecting their wits and recovering their bearings…but new expressions of dismay bent their features at every glance.

Mickey followed their gazes, up, up, to a spot just above and northeast of the Castle, where there was…nothing. Only the outrageously clear blue sky.

The empty spot, the ghost of a snowy mountain, slammed into his awareness like a derailing roller coaster car. "The Matterhorn…it's _gone_!"

He leaped to his feet and spun around, eyes flitting from point to point around Central Plaza. Everywhere he looked, comfortable wonders were simply absent. Triton Gardens—gone. The Astro Orbitor—gone…and indeed, the whole of the gateway to Tomorrowland altered almost beyond recognition.

Partners—gone. The statue of himself and Walt Disney, the tribute to the magic they made together, was vanished entirely, leaving Central Plaza looking as empty as a broken heart. Mickey didn't complete the circuit, instead stopped dead facing due south and hung his head in despair. What a dreadful destruction Maleficent had wreaked, excising so many of the park's triumphs as completely as if they had never existed!

Goofy set a heavy hand on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Mickey," he said, all trace of comic awkwardness submerged in grief.

"Get everyone to pull themselves together," Mickey said without looking up. "Organize them into teams and send them through the park to find out _everything_ that's missing. I'll be in—"

He was interrupted by a cry of surprise behind him. It was neither positive nor negative, it simply was. He looked back over his shoulder to see nearly every character still present clustered at the Castle archway, their backs to the Plaza. Staring into Fantasyland.

"Guys, what is it?" Mickey asked, frankly curious.

Minnie turned away from the focus of attention just long enough to respond. "Mickey, it's—well—you'd better come look!" Her tone, like the simple cry that had caught his notice, was neither pleased nor displeased. He pattered over to see, and the sea of his friends parted to make way for him.

There was Fantasyland. There was the courtyard where the dark rides presented themselves, and the King Arthur Carrousel. What was strange? Something was strange…

Mickey blinked. And blinked again. The Carrousel was _too close_, that's what was strange. It was…where it had been in the old days, before it was repositioned to ease traffic bottlenecks at the land's entrance. The rest of the courtyard, too, had reverted to its former look—gone was the quaint European architecture, back in place the classically corny medieval tournament tent fronts for the rides. Just past the Carrousel, Mickey could make out the old, ten-car Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride. It was disturbing in its way, but not horrific by any stretch of the imagination. How did this fit into Maleficent's vicious sorcery? He tried to wrap his brain around the puzzle, and failed.

Old Fantasyland…

Treasured things and people gone…as if they had never existed…_never existed…don't exist…yet…_

Operating under a strange, fey hunch, Mickey turned back toward Central Plaza, letting his gaze carry all the way up Main Street. Decades-old memories stirred, ruffled their feathers, and found prominent places to perch.

He knew this view. He knew this place.

"Fellas," he said softly, "it's…we've…she…" Words failed him. (Words are false things.)

It was Goofy—witless, wise Goofy—who supplied the needed expression. "It's like we've gone back in time or somethin'!"

"Yeah," Mickey chuckled nervously. "Yeah!" The laughter began coming in earnest, giddy with relief. "Maleficent didn't destroy anything! She just _backtracked_ it!" The horror of the past few minutes collapsed on itself, and peals of mirth rang throughout the infant Central Plaza.

"Well, I don't think it's a laughing matter!" Minnie broke in. "Destroyed or backtracked, we've lost _fifty years'_ worth of progress!"

"I know," Mickey grinned, coming back down from the momentary euphoria. "But at least we know we'll get it all back eventually. And maybe this time we can avoid some of the mistakes that have been made over the years."

"I don't like it," Minnie insisted. "Those mistakes are how we learned. And anyway, can we be sure that we really did go back in time?"

"C'mon, Minnie, what else could it be?" And all around him came the murmurs of assent. It made too much sense to be otherwise.

"A youthening spell," Minnie answered flatly, and Mickey felt the smile shrink off his face, "turning Disneyland—and the Disney Family—into earlier versions of themselves _without_ changing the world's flow of time. In that case, we might very well _not_ get it all back eventually."

There was a moment of stark silence as the gathered characters weighed her words. "Gosh…I-I hadn't thought of that," Mickey stammered.

"Ah, phooey!" Donald interjected (feeling, perhaps, that he wasn't contributing enough to the conversation). "I don't know about the rest of you, but _I_ don't feel any younger!"

It was a semi-nonsensical statement—none of them aged per se, except as required by their stories. "So...what's your point, Donald?" Mickey prompted.

"My point is, I think we've really been sent back in time, like Goofy said!"

"Uh…I did?"

"What makes you think so?" said Minnie. She sounded sweet enough in the asking, but her posture—leaning strongly on one leg, arms akimbo—said otherwise.

"It's like this," Donald explained, speaking slowly to make sure he was understood. "If we've somehow been put back the way we were in 1955, how come we still have all our memories from 2005? Wouldn't our minds get de-aged too? And what about these clothes? Why aren't we in our old clothes?"

It was a valid question, if clumsily phrased. All eyes turned to Mickey. As if he had all the answers. All those scared, bemused eyes… He realized that the discovery of Old Fantasyland had allowed them to recover from the trauma just enough to begin to look for a solution…and they had lit on him, Mickey Mouse, as their best bet. For all of them—as well as for the many who were mislaid—he had to be the hero of the day. At the very least, he had to stand tall and offer the one universal solace: hope.

"Hmmm," he pondered. "If only there was some way to know for sure." He racked his brain, letting his gaze drift upward until he was looking at the Castle turrets again. It still bothered him to see them so plain, when he remembered them so elegantly ornamented. Except…on the large, short tower just left of the archway, something was out of place. Something gleamed gold where no gold had been placed during the Castle's construction, like an absurd stain…the silhouette of a mouse-eared beanie cap in gold, studded with diamonds.

It was a fragment of a crown: the one Mickey thought of as the Mouseketeer crown, symbolizing the first whirlwind decade of Disneyland's existence when the Mouseketeers were the envy of American youth. That was what the crown as a whole stood for. What the small fragment of it remaining represented was…a chance. It was a literal bright spot in the gloom, a sliver of normalcy in the out-of-step world Maleficent had dropped them all into, a crack in the prison wall.

He must have been looking quite flabbergasted, because Minnie asked "What is it, Mickey?"

"Fellas…I think we can rule out anything as straightforward as time travel _or_ the Fountain of Youth."

"Aw nuts," Donald muttered. "How come?"

"Because _that_ wasn't part of the original design!" Mickey announced, pointing so hard at the crown fragment that his feet nearly left the ground. Not everyone spotted it immediately, but he held his strained pose until all the perplexed sounds had turned to cautiously delighted ones.

"But what does it mean?" queried Alice.

"It means," Mickey explained, his eyes still riveted to the shining bauble (was it just his imagination, or was there a trace of glitter in the paint just near it?), "that Maleficent's spell wasn't quite complete." He turned to face his friends. "And as every sorcerer knows, a spell only partly done is much more easily _un_done!"

"It's quite true," Cinderella's Fairy Godmother confirmed.

The notion that they might not, after all, be in dire straits swept the assembly like sunlight advancing over a plain at dawn. Mickey raised his hands to restore order before chaos really got underway. "Don't get too excited; we're not out of the woods yet. We still don't know exactly what _is_ going on, or how to fix it. But I—I mean, _we_—that is to say, Minnie and Donald and Goofy and I—oh, and Pluto too—intend to find out! So, uh, sit tight, relax as best you can, and we'll have all this sorted out before you know it!"

The members of his audience traded uncertain looks. A few tried clapping slowly, one or two raised a half-hearted cheer. He couldn't blame them for being less than hearty about it; so much was still doubtful, and his stumbling speech could hardly have done much to inspired confidence. Mickey met the eyes of his closest compatriots and waved them to follow him up Main Street.

Just before setting off in earnest, he half-turned back to the gathering and chirruped, "See ya all _real_ soon!" He felt tacky saying it, like he was cheapening the solemnity of the situation, but he knew the familiarity of the line would give them comfort.

As the small group trooped northward on the famous thoroughfare, Minnie sidled over to Mickey and muttered, "Boy, Mickey! You sure can lay it on thick when you have to!"

"Well, you just said it yourself," he replied haggardly. "I have to. I don't think they've ever needed me to be strong and on top of things as much as they do now."

"Maybe once or twice before…" she said, sounding oddly distant. Mickey didn't press the issue, having much more immediate matters on his mind.

"Say, Mickey, where are we going?" Donald broke the silence.

"To get my Hat," Mickey replied simply.

"Aren'tcha already wearin' it?" Goofy challenged him.

"Not this hat," said Mickey, sweeping the tall shako from his head. "My _Hat_."

Comprehension dawned instantly. "Ooohhhhhhhhh…" chorused three voices and a canine rumble.

That, at least, would be in its rightful place. Mickey had kept it stored in the same spot since Main Street's paving stones were first laid.

They had reached Main Street proper, the straight stretch between Town Square and Central Plaza lined on both sides with storefronts, antique gas lamps, and painstakingly accurate clocks, which displayed identical times of 9:48 a.m.

"Is it really that late?" Goofy asked idly, checking against his own watch. (It registered a time of 3:13, and had ever since the battery had run down four days previously, which fact escaped his notice entirely.)

"Gosh, I hadn't noticed," said Mickey, "but you're right. Whatever year this is, we should be open by now—but I haven't seen any guests or Cast Members since Maleficent showed up! Where _is_ everyone?"

"It must be another effect of the spell," Minnie observed. "We'll have to figure it out with everything else."

"It could be an important clue, though," said Mickey. "Everyone keep it in mind. Aha, here we are!"

There was nothing to distinguish it from any other spot along Disneyland's famous thoroughfare. It wasn't the center of anything or the crossroads of anything, or a different color from the ground around it. It was a nice, inconspicuous hiding place—the best way to find it was to already know where it was, and the _only_ way to access its contents was to be the person who owned them. The bronze chest that nestled under the innocent-looking bricks, disguised as a time capsule similar to the one's the park management buried from time to time, would respond to Mickey's touch and no one else's. (The inscription reading "Do Not Open Until July 17, 2055" ensured that no maintenance worker who discovered it by accident would even try to raise the lid.)

Mickey wasn't even sure how the box came to be so particular. The combination lock it was outfitted with was complicated, and aligning the tumblers depended as much on subtle manual technique as on the correct sequence of numbers, but it was not magical in itself. Yet no one other than Mickey Mouse could so much as rotate the dials; they would stick as though rusted to the point of welding fast inside their casings. It was a magic as mysterious as it was beneficial, providing ultimate protection for a treasure beyond price.

The most difficult part of retrieving the chest was shifting the bricks that overlay it. About twenty of them in a patch were mortared to each other, but not to those surrounding them, so that they made a kind of irregular slab. With a crowbar it would have been easy enough, but as it was Mickey had to wedge his fingertips into the seams and heave it aside through sheer brute force, of which he possessed little. Lifting out the chest was easier; though it too was heavy, it had handles.

"Well, I'll be doggoned!" Donald exclaimed. "Mickey, you rascal—so this is where you've been hiding it!"

"Yup," Mickey agreed simply, carefully setting the combination—it was more like playing an advanced tune on an exotic musical instrument than anything else—and flipping open the lid when a soft click from inside the mechanism signaled his success.

Even the bright morning daylight could not camouflage the soft gold-white glow suffusing the mirrored interior of the chest. The object that Mickey withdrew from its resting place, draped in an aura of quiet power, was a thing of legend, the most coveted magical artifact in his collection as well as the most famous piece of headgear in the Disney canon…the Sorcerer's Hat!

To the untrained, unappreciative eye, the physicality of it didn't match the atmosphere of mysticism. The simple cone, rolled up at the edge to make a cushy brim, had once been a deep indigo, splashed with silvery stars and crescent moons. It had slightly faded over time to a shade more like dark cornflower; as well, the fabric had frayed a very little bit in places, so that a few stray threads poked out here and there. It didn't _look_ like a talisman of great power…but it would be a rare person indeed who had so little magical sensitivity that he or she could not discern its mightiness on some unconscious level at least.

And what was the Hat's power? Not, as so many assumed, a totipotent spellcasting ability that was transferred to the wearer. It was much more subtle and wonderful, and had everything to do with its conical shape. Everyone knows that witches' and wizards' hats are always conical, and hardly anyone ever wonders why. It is for the same reason that megaphones and funnels are conical—the hollow tapered shape collects and projects and directs that which travels through it. In the case of a magician's hat, what travels through it—in both directions—is raw magical energy, the stuff of change. Everyone has a latent ability to tap into the transformative force. Only a very few ever learn how to use it at will. A conical hat is an excellent vessel for making the transition. Even accomplished sorcerers, such as Mickey Mouse, benefit from the use of such a conduit, just as even the most experienced chemist still uses funnels.

"What are you planning to do, Mickey?" asked Minnie.

"I'm going to find Maleficent," he explained grimly. "And then I'm gonna _make_ her tell us how to fix this. She's not so tough when facing someone who refuses to be bullied, and she won't take me by surprise a second time." He chuckled. "But I need someplace just a _little_ darker and more private than Main Street at ten in the morning."

"How about the Opera House?" Donald suggested, thumbing over his shoulder at the elegant white building that stood on the east side of Town Square.

"Perfect! Thanks, Donald," Mickey agreed. He took a moment to replace the chest in the ground and cover it with the brick slab, and then the five of them set off for the Opera House.

The Main Street Opera House is often overlooked by casual Disneyland guests, perhaps because its recessed location makes it inconspicuous compared to the other attractions and shops on the boulevard. It should be better known than it is, because for forty years, it hosted probably the most famous technological invention ever created for a theme park: the audio-animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln (or rather several of them, each more lifelike than the last). At one time, it had been the official headquarters of something possibly even more famous: the Mickey Mouse Club.

At the very beginning, it wasn't an attraction at all, except in the sense of being a sight to see. Only the façade was accessible to guests; the interior of the building consisted of the Disneyland Mill, where all the park's artistic woodwork was produced. Even this was scarcely evident, however, as Mickey and his friends entered the warehouse-like space. No half-finished projects cluttered the workbenches, the rasps and chisels all hung clean in the tool racks, and even the floor was swept free of sawdust. And there was not an artisan in sight. The building was fully lit in accordance with normal working hours, but apart from them it was eerily empty of life.

Mickey sat down on a low pile of pine boards. "Dim the lights, would you, Goofy?" he requested. After a small amount of fumbling with switches and minor electrical shocks, the lanky dog managed to reduce the ambient light to about the level of candlelight. Perfect. Now for the hard part.

Focusing all his attention on the _essence_ of Maleficent—her mien of dark, serpentine elegance, her extraordinary power…the utter corruption in her soul, from whence she drew her name—Mickey carefully lowered the Sorcerer's Hat onto his head, while his friends watched with baited breath. He pricked up his metaphysical ears, "listening" for Maleficent's presence, wherever it was…

And with a tremendous rushing, falling sensation, he slipped into a nightmare.

To Be Continued…


	3. Chapter 3

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 3: The Edge of Existence

No sooner had the Sorcerer's Hat settled onto Mickey's head than the void _hit_ him. Not like a wave or a missile or anything that must travel to reach a point; it was simply _there_: a sense of dark empty vastness so utter, his mind could not fully take it in. It filled the universe, it _was_ the universe, a coldness so cold it burned, a darkness so dark it seared the eyes, a nothingness so bleak it was crushing. He was dissolving into it—

—He was lying on the cement floor of the wood mill, with Pluto licking his face forlornly and Minnie fanning him with her lace handkerchief. Goofy and Donald crouched over him, their faces creased with worry. Donald held the Hat out at arm's length as though it were venomous and would bite him.

"Just take it easy there, Mickster," Goofy said.

"I'm all right," Mickey responded automatically, but in truth, he _was_ all right. Unbelievably, he suffered no ill effects from that ghastly experience, which already seemed a distant memory. "I _am_ all right," he marveled, sitting up and examining his perfectly real and solid hands.

"Good gracious, Mickey, what happened?" Minnie emoted.

"I'm not sure," said Mickey. "I have to try that again. Donald, give me the Hat."

"No way!" the duck refused, holding it high overhead with both hands and standing on his toes for good measure. "Not after what just happened!"

"Oh, I'll be fine. I'm ready for it this time." This, too, was the plain truth, although he didn't know how he knew. Donald, understandably, still looked skeptical. "Please, Donald?"

With a king-sized sigh, Donald handed over the Hat. "Oh, all right, here. But on _your_ head be it!"

"Well, sure!" Goofy broke in, grinning buffoonishly. "It's a hat; where else would it be?"

"Wise guy," Donald muttered. Minnie giggled. For the second time, Mickey Mouse donned the Sorcerer's Hat, his hands trembling at the prospect of—

—a space larger than Space itself, filled with nothing except velvety darkness for as far as the eye could see…which, in total darkness, is not far at all. It was not a place, for _place_ implies points of reference, and what could bear any relation to an infinite void? Nor was it a phenomenon, for phenomena are quantifiable. There is no word for what it was. It just _was_. It was…a wasness.

Anyone would recognize it, and they would all be right, and wrong. An astrophysicist would know it for the conditions before the Big Bang gave meaning to words like _before_. A theologian would suppose it to be Limbo. A mathematician would take it for the result of dividing by zero. A painter would remember it as a canvas so blank that even the canvas was not there. All these perceptions would be equally true and equally false.

Mickey Mouse knew only that he did not belong there. It wasn't that it was hostile to him, or he to it. He was not intruding per se, nor was he imprisoned. It simply was not for him. In that inky emptiness he was a stranger, a foreigner, an alien.

Yet at the same time, impossibly, it was somehow…familiar.

Just then, the Voices overtook him.

They were not truly voices, of course, because sound could no more exist in the nothingness than could light. But Mickey's mind was suddenly filled with the _impression_ of quite a lot of people shouting, dozens of them. And not just shouting in general, but shouting _at him_. To him. Calling him. And he recognized every one of them.

Instantly he understood—or partly understood—and he opened his eyes once again in the cool interior of the Opera House. Panting, staring blankly ahead, he eased the Hat down into his lap.

"What did you find out?" Minnie asked.

"I think I found…everyone who disappeared," he replied. "Maleficent, too. It's like they're in…another dimension…where nothing is really real." Overcome with the mind-boggle of it all, he slid from the woodpile into a kneeling position on the floor. A tiny, nervous laugh escaped him. "I'm sorry I can't explain it any better than that."

The others traded puzzled looks. "I don't get it," said Donald. "How can anyone _be_ in a place where nothing is really real?"

Mickey closed his eyes and scrubbed at them with the heels of his hands, trying to make the concepts and the words fall into place. "It's because of the time warp. They don't exist, because it's not time yet…but they don't _not_ exist, because we remember them. So they're trapped right on the edge of reality."

"Gawrsh! That sounds serious!" Goofy wailed.

"And Maleficent's in the same boat?" Donald asked pointedly.

"Yeah," Mickey replied, allowing a very slight smugness to creep into his voice and heaving over onto one hip. "In fact, I bet her spell went awry because she accidentally rewound her own existence along with everyone else's."

"Well, serve her right!" Minnie opined.

"I couldn't agree more, Minnie. But we still need enough of her to find out exactly what she did, and unfortunately I don't think I can contact her properly through the Hat. We'll have to enlist the aid of someone who specializes in contacting other planes of existence…or semi-existence, as the case may be."

"Gee whiz," said Goofy, impressed. "Who do we know who can do that?"

Mickey allowed himself a sly grin. "Well…since we're about fourteen years too early for Madam Leota, we'll have to pay a visit to Esmeralda!"

Confused stares met the statement…as Mickey had mischievously hoped they would. Even Pluto cocked an eyebrow and an ear and shot his master an explanation-demanding look. "Uh…Mickey?" Minnie said gently. "We're about _forty_ years too early for Esmeralda."

"Not _that_ Esmeralda," Mickey chuckled. "The _other_ Esmeralda!"

"_Other_ Esmeralda?" his three friends chorused.

"To the Penny Arcade!"

* * *

The swarthy gypsy woman in the glass booth gave the approaching figures only half a glance as she swept the carefully laid out cards from the counter back into her hand. Just out of curiosity, she cut the deck at random and surreptitiously peeked. 

The Two of Spades—oh, dear. Still, customers were customers. Especially _these_ customers!

"Ah! Mr. and Ms. Mouse, how nice to see you! And Mr. Duck and Mr. Goof, likewise, of course."

"Fellas," said Mickey, indicating the gypsy with a sweep of his arms (a careful sweep, as the Sorcerer's Hat was tucked under one of them), "say hello to Esmeralda!"

"Oh, _that_ Esmeralda," the three of them muttered.

"'Oh, _that_ Esmeralda,' you all say," Esmeralda repeated suspiciously. "Why, I wonder? Mr. Mouse, is there some other Esmeralda I should know about?"

"You tell me, Es, you're the fortuneteller," Mickey slyly pointed out. "Which is why we're here—we need your unique talents."

"Clever as always," she remarked flirtatiously, resting her chin on one furled, bejeweled hand while Minnie rolled her eyes. "So, what mysterious influence compels the mighty Sorcerer's Apprentice to seek out the services of a simple fortuneteller, at a special VIP bargain price? Something has occurred to make you desire a glimpse of the future?"

"Actually, Es, the future's pretty clear just now," Mickey said. "What I'm in the market for is more…complicated."

"Oh, _really_?" the gypsy responded, intrigued. "Do tell. Can it be that even the saintly Mickey Mouse occasionally feels the need to curse his enemies?"

"No!" Mickey burst out, appalled. "Nothing like that! I just need to talk to someone who's not—you know—here."

"You need change for the pay phone?" Esmeralda deadpanned.

"Oh—that's not what I mean and you know it!" Mickey scolded.

"Yes, you are right, I do know it. Can you blame me for having a bit of fun? It is so rare that anyone comes to me for more than a pre-printed fortune card."

"Well, will you help us?"

"But of course, Mr. Mouse! _Anything_ for one as illustrious as you. So it is a séance you are after, is it? I am afraid I cannot perform any charity work. For you…five dollars American."

The group did a double-take. "That…that's all?" said Minnie.

Esmeralda _hmphed_ and tossed her straight black hair as much as she could in the confinement of the booth and the headscarf she wore. "Yes, that is _all_, Ms. Wealthy Hollywood Cartoon Star Mouse. To all of us, five dollars is not so trifling." She stooped slightly to undo a catch beneath the counter, then carefully swung the front half of the booth outward so that she could exit. She took a moment to stretch her back before addressing her customers again. "Follow me."

They walked two abreast, with Pluto bringing up the rear. Donald took the opportunity to whisper to Goofy, "Five bucks, wow! I could get used to 1955 prices, at least!"

"A-hyuk!" Goofy agreed.

The Penny Arcade looked refreshingly familiar: having changed little in the course of fifty years, it had also changed little in the reversion. The rows of old-fashioned game devices—pinball machines and nickelodeons and marionettes—blinked and glittered like a forest of gaudy lights, an indoor carnival. Esmeralda led them straight to the back, to a door marked "Cast Members Only."

Mickey had to smile. Cast Members. That had been a real stroke of genius—making the show so immersive that even the normal language of business was abandoned in favor of the language of performance.

"Right this way," Esmeralda said, opening the door.

Beyond it was another world. Not literally, of course, although with all that had happened so far that day, Mickey and the others would not have been too surprised if the door _had _opened onto somewhere other than one of the many "backstage" areas at Disneyland. Still, crossing the threshold was like stepping directly from the Amazon to the Arctic. The machinery that creates magnificent beauty is rarely itself lovely, and what lies behind the scenes at the park is as mundane as the public view is magical. Break rooms, offices, merchandise stockrooms, janitorial closets, all served as a sharp reminder that whatever else Disneyland was, it was ultimately a business, and required businesslike facilities.

What Esmeralda led them to looked like a break room from the outside. On the inside…it still looked something like a break room. There was the bulletin board, there the mini-fridge and sink. But instead of harsh incandescent lighting and linoleum, it was decorated with maroon velvet drapes and fragrant beeswax candles. The round table in the center of the room was made of wood, not Bakelite, and there were peculiar arcane-looking symbols carved into the rim. To one side, a set of small shelves was piled with Tarot cards, astrological charts, and a conspicuously large crystal ball. If this was a break room, it was Esmeralda's personal one.

"Have a seat," the gypsy bade them, indicating six chairs placed around the table. Incongruously, they were break room standard, cheap, constructed out of steel and plastic. As the group sat—even Pluto clambered up into a chair next to Mickey and set his front paws on the table—Esmeralda bustled about the room, setting up censers full of exotic woods and resins and lighting more candles. Soon the room was suffused with a heavy, perfumed glow. Esmeralda took the last remaining seat directly across from Mickey.

"All join hands," she intoned, and they obeyed. "From the moment the séance begins, we must thus remain in contact, or the connection with the spirit world will be lost. Now, concentrate on the one whose presence you require. No—do not speak. No names, only thoughts. _See_ that one in your minds, hear his voice, bring the idea of him here, and he will come here in fact. Clear your minds of everything except the one you wish to call. When your thoughts are all in resonance with one another, your message will fly out to reach him, and he will come. Begin."

Silence fell, and Mickey closed his eyes and did as he had done before—focused on Maleficent. Presumably the others were doing the same, but he wasn't sure how adept they were at such concentration. If they were smart, they would just let the atmosphere that Esmeralda had created carry them…

Esmeralda jerked suddenly, both hands clutching her neighbors' so tightly that knuckle-whiteness spread the length of her fingers from gaudy rings to painted nails. Her head thrashed back and forth, each movement accompanied by a deep moaning groan. Her eyes rolled beneath their fluttering lids. It was impossible to tell what was genuinely part of the trance inducement and what was merely for show, but the five witnesses seated around the table fervently hoped that the vast majority was the former. This was no time for frivolous melodrama!

All at once, the gypsy sat bolt upright as all the candles in the room flared and—against all logic—the temperature dropped sharply. Her head was thrown back, her lips parted. She breathed deeply and, as she exhaled, slowly lowered her head until it was bowed. The candle flames shrank until they were mere droplets of blue-gold light in the fragrant dimness of the room. Then they returned to normal, Esmeralda's head raised and her eyes opened. Except that they weren't _her_ eyes, those dark laughing things, but different eyes—reptilian eyes, bulging and pale, even glowing like phosphorescent fungi in a cave.

Maleficent's eyes.

And it was Maleficent's voice that spoke, emanating though it was from Esmeralda's throat. Her usual haughtiness was overlaid with a haggard weariness, as though she were suffering through some terrible ordeal. "Well ,well, Mickey Mouse." She lingered ever so slightly on the _s_ sound as though speaking with a snake's tongue. "Your tastes in mysticism are broader than I had supposed."

Mickey suppressed his sense of wonder at the gypsy's occult skill and made himself sternly businesslike. "Can it, Maleficent. I didn't call you up for small talk."

"You wish to gloat over my predicament then, I presume. How smug it must make you to see me caught in my own trap…but I must remember to whom I am speaking. Far be it from such a pure-hearted hero to indulge in callous, petty mockery, am I right?"

"Does it matter?" Mickey shot right back. "I think you're smart enough to figure out why I had Esmeralda channel you."

"Indeed," Maleficent said almost before he had finished speaking. "You wish to know what I've done to your precious park, and while we're at it, how you can reverse the spell.

"First, let me make it abundantly clear that I cooperate _only_ because I have, quite by accident, victimized myself along with all your virtuous friends." The Wicked Fairy's voice was heavy now with bitter sarcasm. "Were circumstances otherwise, I would happily watch your desperate, futile endeavors to rescue them from this gloomy state."

"I would expect nothing less," Mickey smirked. "Where are you, anyway? I couldn't see a thing when I was there."

"That would be because there is nothing to see. Nothing real, at any rate," Maleficent sighed. "This is not a place, noble hero, but a state of being—or, I should rather say, of _non_-being. It is the condition of being…unrealized. Possible, but not actual. But if it makes it easier for your little mind to grasp, by all means think of it as a place—the domain of unfinished ideas, as it were. Even give it a name if you like. 'Inpotentia' has a lovely ring to it, does it not?"

Mickey ignored both the insult and the digression. "Unfinished ideas, huh? But every idea has been unfinished at one time or another."

"Precisely," Maleficent said with a hint of condescension. "Consider the implications for a moment, Sorcerer's Apprentice. Every dream, every dread, every wish, every whimsy, every plan, every plot, every concept, theory, and notion in the history of thought…_all_ has passed through this grey realm. The vast majority, of course, never see the light of true existence. You and I, and all those whom we know, are the fortunate ones. We are dreams that became reality."

"Until you reversed that good fortune by reversing time," Minnie said accusingly.

"You reveal your ignorance of the esoteric," Maleficent replied coolly. "Had I truly succeeded in reversing time, as you put it, we would not be having this conversation, for memory would have regressed to fit and none of you would have noticed that anything was wrong. It would be business as usual in 1955.

"I miscalculated, however. The details of my error need not concern you. Suffice it to say that I ran afoul of my own spell, and thus lost control of it. Instead of being erased altogether, five decades—and their legacy of achievement—were merely trapped between existence and non-existence. Therefore they vanished from your sight, but not from your memory. And therein lies the key to our salvation."

"Wait a minute," said Mickey, sheer amazement blooming in his mind. "You managed to _trap time_? I didn't think that was possible!"

"My dear mouse, the subtleties of magic of which you are unaware would fill several grimoires. Nonetheless, it is to you that I must entrust the knowledge of my technique so that the damage I have done may be repaired. Is it not ironic that you and I should find ourselves allies in this? Desperation, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows…"

Mickey cringed at her choice of words—_there_ was a mental image he didn't need. He focused instead on Maleficent's uncharacteristic admission of desperation. No matter how great her need, he would have expected her to use trickery to gain his assistance rather than openly confess to being in dire straits. Was it a clue? A red herring? Or had he misjudged the Wicked Fairy, overestimated her poise?

"How did you do it, Maleficent?"

"It was actually very simple—why, half of the work was already done for me, thanks to you."

"Thanks to _me_? What are you talking about?"

"You need ask? I am disappointed. I speak of the crowns, of course—five exquisite golden jeweled crowns set atop the towers of a fairy-tale Castle that has stood for half a century, each one explicitly a symbol of one decade of that half-century. _You_ know well the power of symbols, Mickey Mouse, having been one yourself for most of your existence. How easily they become inseparable from the thing symbolized. _You_ invested those crowns with meaning until, as far as magic is concerned, they _were_ Disneyland's history. It was an easy thing to steal and imprison that history by stealing and imprisoning the crowns. Likewise, if you restore them to their rightful place, the timeline of this park will be restored."

"So where are they?" Donald demanded imperiously.

Esmeralda's lips twitched into Maleficent's crafty smile. "Patience, my fiery-tempered waterfowl. To be perfectly honest, I know not precisely where the crowns are. I had intended to consign them to oblivion, making my spell irreversible and my victory complete, but when I lost control of the spell, they flew out of my reach. I can say only that they must be retrievable, or else—again—we would not be having this conversation.

"And now, I fear, we have come to the end of the assistance that I am able to provide in this matter. I have nothing more to offer before I allow this charlatan to resume command of her own body, save an admonition."

There was a long pause. "Well, go ahead," Mickey finally prompted.

The reply was curt. "_Make haste_, Mickey Mouse. We may not have infinite time. I have sensed a dreadful danger in this dismal halfway realm—a danger which might destroy any of us. Dreams may become reality…but they may also be forgotten, and vanish as though they had never been conceived."

Mickey shuddered and swallowed hard, fighting off the memory of a suffocating nothingness that threatened to disperse his being. His hands clenched involuntarily until Minnie and Pluto yelped at the pressure. "I think I know what you mean," he said with a dry mouth, forcing himself to sound calm and detached. "I…sensed something too, when I went looking for you."

"You understand the urgency then. In that case, I leave you to your heroic duty."

"Not just yet, Maleficent," Mickey said, letting a sly edge creep into his voice. "_I_ have something else to say to _you_ first."

"Oh?"

"Yeah! Just you remember, you got yourself into this mess, and if I knew how, I'd rescue all my friends and leave you to sleep in the bed you've made. And that's a promise." And with that, before she could retort, he dropped Minnie's hand and Pluto's paw, breaking the circle.

Esmeralda snapped back to herself. "Is everyone concentrating?" she asked huskily, as though the past ten minutes had not taken place. Goofy immediately screwed his face back up until Minnie nudged him sharply.

"Been and done, Es," said Mickey. "The séance is over."

Esmeralda's face registered surprise just short of shock. "It worked? I'm better than I thought! Maybe I should charge you more…next time, of course. Speaking of which…" She held out her hand expectantly.

"Right," said Mickey. He shoved his hand in his pocket and produced a five-dollar bill, which he almost handed to the fortuneteller before realizing that it was series 2003. He couldn't pay with that in 1955! She would think it a counterfeit—and a laughably clumsy one! "Whoops!" he said, hurriedly sticking it back in his pocket and chuckling sheepishly. "Heh-heh. Prop money. Looks like I'm fresh out of _real_ cash. Can I write you a check instead?"

"Yes, yes, whatever. But only because it is you asking, Mr. Mouse. Next time, you check your movie star wallet _before_ you come asking for help, you hear?"

"Sure thing, Es," said Mickey, hastily scribbling out a check for five bucks and dashing for the doorway before the ink on his signature had dried.

Esmeralda read over the note lazily after the five of them had gone. "Scatterbrained mouse," she mused. "He forgot to write in the date. No matter—I can get ten times as much selling the autograph than if I just cash it! Ha!"

* * *

"Well, guys," Mickey said as they emerged back onto Main Street. "It looks like we've got an old-fashioned quest on our hands!" 

"Oh, Mickey, do you really think we can find all those crowns?" Minnie fretted. "There's no telling where they all are!"

"Of course we can find them. Maleficent said they must be retrievable. Heck, a little piece of one of 'em is still on the Castle."

"But where do we even start looking?"

"Now, Minnie, one thing at a time. First we tell everyone what we found out. Then we can put together a plan."

"You're right," she sighed. "It's all just so overwhelming!"

"Tell me about it," said Mickey. "The past few hours have been the emotional equivalent of the Tower of Terror. Up and down and up and down again…and sideways and diagonally too!"

"Well, that explains everything!" Donald interjected. "We've crossed over into…the Twilight Zone!"

It was too much. Like a mountain avalanche triggered by the fall of a tiny pebble, all five of them exploded into laughter. It felt indescribably good, having a moment of pure, unrestrained joy after all that had happened that day. When the glee finally subsided, Mickey clapped Donald on the back and said "Thanks, ol' pal. We really needed that. Now let's go tell everyone about our new quest."

Maybe it was the aftereffects of Donald's deliberately lame joke, or his decision to view the monumental task before them as a _quest_…but as they headed back to Central Plaza, Mickey found his spirits oddly buoyed. Perhaps it was that his career as _the_ star of the Disney Family, while rewarding in its way, was demanding without providing any outlet for the heroic aspects of his personality…and now he was getting a spectacularly broad outlet indeed.

In any case, the late-morning air held a definite tang of adventure for Mickey Mouse, as he made his way down Main Street to bring the message back to his people.

To Be Continued…


	4. Chapter 4

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 4: Fickle Memories

"Mickey Mouse, you are surely the slyest individual ever to garner a reputation as America's Nice Guy."

"What do you mean, Minnie?" Mickey asked as the Fab Five strode up Main Street toward Central Plaza.

"_You_ know what I mean," she said in a tone that was half chiding, half admiring, half amused, half perplexed, and mostly sweet. "You weren't entirely honest with Maleficent in there."

Mickey slightly smiled. "Well, I didn't exactly tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…but are you gonna tell me _she_ deserves it?"

"Nope!" Minnie tittered. "She was hiding things from you, too—I could tell."

"Bingo," Mickey agreed. "If I were a gambling mouse, I'd give pretty long odds against her knowing as little about this 'Inpotentia' as she claimed. For starters, she already had a name for it!"

"And a corny one at that," Donald offered. "Who does she think she's kidding? There has to be more to her plan than just trying to spite everyone."

"That's my hunch," said Mickey. "Before we jump into looking for the crowns, I intend to ask a certain party a few questions."

When they arrived back at Central Plaza, however, they found it nearly deserted. For a horrifying instant, they thought that the rest of their friends had somehow been banished to semi-existence, but no—Pinocchio and Brer Rabbit were sitting quite calmly on a bench, playing cards for a stake of ride coupons. Pinocchio was losing very badly, because a) he was young and inexperienced, and b) Brer Rabbit kept cheating quite flagrantly, and every time the wooden boy was tempted to act in kind, Jiminy Cricket would gently lecture him into pursuing a more honest strategy.

"Hey, fellas," Mickey called to them.

"Welcome back, Mickey," Jiminy responded with a token tip of his thimble-sized top hat. "Did you find out what you needed to know?"

"Uh…more or less," Mickey replied distractedly. "Jiminy, where did everyone go?"

"Oh, there's nothing to worry about. We didn't know what to do, so it was decided by general consensus that everyone should take up a post at their own attraction until we had a plan. Just to have a familiar routine to fall back on, you see."

"Makes sense," Mickey agreed. "And that's where they all are now?"

"Sho' nuff they are," Brer Rabbit confirmed. "But Brer Puppet and Brer Cricket and me, our rides wasn't built up fer roundabouts thirty years since 1955, so's we ain't got no place to go 'cept right here. So here we is!"

"Uh…glad to hear it?" Mickey half-guessed as an appropriate response to the rabbit's heavily accented statement.

Donald leaned close. "And you thought _I_ was hard to understand," he whispered. Mickey nudged him back rather indelicately.

"Do you need them all back here?" Jiminy asked.

"No, that's all right," said Mickey. "If they're all staying calm and keeping busy, it'll do for now." He beckoned to the rest of the Five. "C'mon, gang. We'll split up to spread the word about what's going on."

"What _is_ going on, Mickey?" asked Pinocchio. "What did Maleficent do to everyone?"

"She trapped them in a place we can't reach directly," Mickey explained with a meaningful glance at Minnie, who, to his satisfaction, drew the others close and began whispering to them. "But they're all together, and they know we're working on freeing them."

"We are?" the marionette blinked.

"We will be soon," Mickey assured him. "And then I'll let you know what you can do to help." Knowing Pinocchio's childish propensity for dragging out a conversation, he hurried over the Castle drawbridge into Fantasyland, the others close behind him.

It was a splash of cold water all over again. Knowing intellectually that the park's signature land had reverted to its original state did not dispel the gut expectation developed over twenty-odd years of seeing the remodeled courtyard, day after day. What had been normal decades ago was now the anomaly.

All the same, there was something blissfully nostalgic about being in the old Fantasyland, with the characters cavorting freely in front of their rides, more enticing than any bellowing carnival hawk. If there had been any guests in that time-displaced scene, they would have been instantly enchanted. Snow White and her Prince danced blissfully to cheerful music provided by the Dwarves, while Peter Pan demonstrated aerial acrobatics to the clumsily hovering Darling children. The Fab Five split up as they went along, to bring the news of their new quest to the characters—as much of the news, at any rate, as they could probably handle. Mickey's goal, however, was a bit further in, where eighteen riotously colored giant teacups spun to the strains of a teapot orchestra.

In the absence of guests, Alice and her entourage had the Mad Tea Party all to themselves, and they were making the most of it. Most of the characters occupied cups in groups of two or three…but the one Mickey had come to see was sprawled on a velvet plush high-backed throne, watching over the tableau with great interest.

"I need a word with you, Your Majesty," he said without preamble.

Frantically, her eyes locked on the whirling cups, the Queen of Hearts shushed him.

Mickey frowned. He wasn't sure he had _ever_ been shushed before. Not seriously, anyway.

"A-_hem_!" he said rather sharply.

"Not now, Mouse!" the Queen barked. "Can't you see I'm trying to judge a race here?"

Mickey let his gaze slide over to the teacup platform. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about the ride. (The passengers were a different story.) "Race?" he repeated with a puzzled head scratch.

"The Mad Tea Party race, of course!" the Queen bellowed, waving her arms exorbitantly. "Now pipe down! You'll make me lose my concentration!"

There wasn't much Mickey could say in response to that, so he waited until the ride cycle ended and the spinning platforms coasted to a halt. The Queen sat up straighter and clapped broadly.

"Wonderful, wonderful!" she cooed. "Everyone take your places for the third heat!" Immediately, the riders leaped to their feet and scrambled around the platform, eventually settling in different teacups, like some kind of exponentially more complicated Chinese fire drill.

Mickey sidled alongside the beaming monarch. "So," he said conversationally, "how can you tell who won?"

"A bit slow today, aren't we, Mickey?" she smirked. "It's a race, isn't it? The winner is the one who finishes first!"

Mickey tried to apply this concept to the Mad Tea Party, and failed. Well, that was Wonderland logic for you. "Now, why didn't I think of that?" he muttered. "Anyway, Your Majesty, if you can hold off on the, uh, third heat for a moment, I've got a few questions for you."

"Well, all right," she said after hardly any hesitation at all. "Because it's _you_ asking, Mickey."

He breathed hugely. "Be honest—did you have any knowledge of Maleficent's scheme?"

The Queen didn't respond right away, perhaps because she was cleaning her ear out with a pudgy finger. "Could you repeat that?" she said carelessly. "I don't think I heard you properly."

Mickey raised his voice slightly. "I said, did you know Maleficent was going to pull something today?"

Suddenly, he was seeing stars as the Queen of Hearts brought her heart-shaped scepter down on his head. "Make sense, man!" she rather ironically admonished him. "You're using an adjective as a proper noun! That's permitted only on the third Thursday of odd-numbered months!"

"What in the world are you talking about?" Mickey grimaced, rubbing his head and speculating idly how to tell the difference between the kind of nonsense that a Wonderlander would actually say, and the kind that a person might erroneously hear after being concussed by a heart-shaped scepter.

"We could ask you the very same question," the Queen said haughtily. She was referring to herself in the plural, her last resort of hauteur.

"Come on, Your Majesty!" Mickey persisted. "Quit playing dumb! You know perfectly well who I'm talking about! Maleficent! Tall, dark, horns, creepy theme music?" He finished up with a flailing outburst worthy of Donald. "_The Wicked Fairy who just sent this whole park and everyone in it back in time FIFTY YEARS!_"

The Queen of Hearts stroked her chin, searching the air, completely unruffled by Mickey's explosion. "Doesn't ring any bellbirds, I'm afraid. Besides, if this really were 1905, we wouldn't have the electricity to run our attraction here, now, would we?" She gestured primly to the Mad Tea Party platform with her scepter. "It seems to us, my dear mouse, that you must have dreamed it all. Would you like some tarts to steady your nerves? We baked them ourselves." She offered him a plate of heart-shaped miniature pies, each with the legend "Eat Me" picked out in red icing.

"Don't mind if I do," said Mickey, reached for one of the pastries. But he caught himself. "No, wait! What do you mean, 1905? 1955 is where we were sent back _to,_ not from! Don't you remember this morning? We were just getting ready to kick off the 50th Anniversary Celebration! And it was no dream!"

"50th Anniversary!" the Queen blew. "'Tis said indeed that time flies, but surely not as fast as all that!" She leaned close and whispered, "Actually, to be perfectly frank, I'll be surprised if this enterprise lasts _one_ year, let alone fifty."

"You really don't remember," Mickey said, staring at her in shock. Maleficent's mocking words, spoken with Esmeralda's mouth, came back to him: _…memory would have regressed to fit and none of you would have noticed that anything was wrong. It would be business as usual…_ Somehow, the Queen of Hearts' mind had backtracked to match the state of the park. As far as she knew, it really _was_ 1955. Disneyland was less than a year old, and it was…business as usual. "You've forgotten that anything's wrong!"

The Queen scowled and clicked her tongue. "You're not playing with a full deck, are you, dear?" she muttered.

"Oh, now, that's too much!" Mickey retorted. "Your Majesty, you're coming with me!" And with that, he seized her by her fleshy arm and hauled her bodily off her throne. Without so much as a backwards glance, he headed straight for Sleeping Beauty's Castle at such a pace that his surprised passenger had to trot to keep up.

"Oh, my," said Alice as she watched the receding figures. "What do you supposed has gotten into him?"

"Bad tea, I should think," the Mad Hatter conjectured blithely.

Fortunately for Mickey, the Queen was more startled than indignant at being so unceremoniously dragged away from the Mad Tea Party, and the most aggressive thing she said during the trek was "Well, I never!"

"I'm going to show you something," said Mickey, "that will prove I know what I'm talking about."

His intent was to show her the tantalizing fragment of the Mouseketeer Crown that still adorned its Castle turret. But as they passed beneath the Castle itself, the Queen's attitude abruptly changed. No longer passively allowing herself to be pulled along, she stopped short, forcing Mickey to stop as well, and clutched both hands to her face.

"Ace of Spades!" she exclaimed. "I remember!"

She hurried out onto the drawbridge and stared up at the turret. "Of course! The crowns! Maleficent! How could I have forgotten? Mickey!"

Mickey approached her, relieved that his plan to make her recover her memory had worked (if not quite in the way he was expecting) and slightly amused at such fluster coming from a person who was normally either regally calm or imperially furious. "Are those 'bellbirds' ringing yet, Your Majesty?" he grinned.

"I can't imagine what happened back there!" was the reply. "It's like my mind was back in 1955!"

"As it happens, that's what Maleficent was hoping for," Mickey informed her. "That all of us would forget we had ever seen the 21st century, accept this situation as normal, and go on forever, never even realizing what we had lost. It didn't work because she got caught in her own trap and couldn't complete the spell. That's why there's still a piece of crown up there. It's actually a piece of the year 2005.

"So to repeat my question from earlier—how much of what I just told you did you know already?"

"What are you implying?" asked the Queen, still too shaken to be properly suspicious.

"You villains occasionally team up to make our lives difficult. Was _this_—" he jerked his thumb up at the Castle, "—a joint project?"

"Good heavens!" the Queen of Hearts said loftily, but with an impishness of tone that belied the threatening words that followed. "You are fortunate in your identity, Mr. Mouse. Anyone else's head would _roll_ for making such a disgraceful accusation!" She sobered. "I may come down on the side of the devils officially, but ultimately my loyalty is with Walt. I would never be part of any plot to damage his legacy! And before you even need ask, if I heard so much as a rumor of any scheming to that effect, I would come straight to you!"

She seemed sincere enough. Mickey found himself trusting her—just this once. Before he could reply to her impassioned speech, however, there was shouting from inside Fantasyland. Someone was calling his name.

It was Minnie and Donald. "Mickey, we've got big problems!" his girlfriend squealed.

"_Huge_ problems!" Donald clarified, spreading his arms in demonstration.

"Am I allowed to guess?" Mickey deadpanned. At their quizzical nods, he went on. "You tried to tell everyone what we found out, and no one knew what you were talking about?"

"Exactly!" Donald confirmed. Just then, the quick-tempered bird noticed the Queen of Hearts. "Hey, what's she doing here?" Her fuse no longer than his, the two of them began squaring off for a row.

"It's okay, Donald; she's on our side…this time," Mickey said hurriedly. The Queen nodded proudly. "I don't know what's making everyone forget about 2005, but coming back here, in front of the Castle, made the Queen remember. I bet it'll work the same for everyone else."

"Should we go get them?" Minnie asked.

"Actually, let them be for now," Mickey said after a moment's thought. "They're all keeping busy, and they're happier not remembering. If we need anyone's help, we can worry about it then. But it would take too long to gather everyone at once, and time's a-wasting!"

He stuck two fingers in his mouth and made a short, sharp, brain-rattling whistle. Within seconds, Pluto came bounding up from wherever in Fantasyland he had been. Goofy wasn't far behind—after all, he was also a dog.

"Fellas," Mickey said when all the Fab Five were gathered, "we're going crown hunting!"

"Splendid!" said the Queen of Hearts. "Perhaps _we_ can be of assistance! Is it any crowns in particular you're hunting?"

"Uh, yeah," said Mickey. "The crowns that go up _there_." He thumbed at the Castle turrets. "It's a long story—but the short version of it is that if we can find all five crowns, everything will go back to normal."

"You certainly have your work cut out for you," the blustering monarch said. "Therefore, it is our royal decree that we shall bestow upon you a—a good luck charm! Take this, with our royal blessing."

And with that, she doffed her own crown and offered it to Mickey with both hands.

"A good luck charm?" he repeated dubiously, eyeing the simple spiked gold circlet.

"A memory token, then," the Queen said. "To guard against the ever-present risk of you forgetting your sacred task. Should the Wicked Fairy's wicked spell begin to take hold of your minds, the sight of this, our royal crown, shall remind you of the crowns you seek."

"Gosh," Mickey gulped. "Thank you, Your Majesty." Gingerly, he accepted the crown. His hands dwarfed it—the Queen's head, which it was made to fit, was rather pointed. "But will you be all right without it?"

"Never you mind," she said airily. "We have instructed the King to give us a new one for our unbirthday. It's coming up, you know.

"And now, we return to our post to await the success of the brave heroes. Ta-ta!" Prancing like a girl half her size, she sauntered back underneath the Castle and was soon lost to sight.

"Well!" said Minnie, arms akimbo. "I certainly never would have expected a gesture like that from _her_!"

"More than a gesture, I think," Mickey responded, turning the Queen's crown this way and that, feeling its weight in his hands. "She has a point—our memories might regress, too. Having this could help."

"Gawrsh, Mickey!" Goofy wailed. "I hope you're right! I don't wanna forget!"

Donald grimaced. "Better have a backup plan, just in case," he said.

"Right," Mickey agreed, stashing the crown in his pocket. He called out to Central Plaza, where Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket, and Brer Rabbit were still involved in their lopsided card games, too engrossed to have noticed the goings-on with the Queen of Hearts. "Jiminy! Jiminy Cricket!"

Jiminy moved quickly, springing grasshopper-style. In very short order, he stood before the Fab Five, raising his hat. "At your service, Mickey!" he said, the soul of sprightly politeness.

"I have a special mission for you, Jiminy. It may not sound like much, but believe me, it might make all the difference in restoring Disneyland to the 21st century."

"Whatever it is, I won't fail you," Jiminy promised. It was not bravado on his part, but trust in Mickey's judgment.

"Great to hear it, pal. We need you to…remember. Everyone who went into Fantasyland lost their memories of all the time since 1955. Maybe it was pretending that nothing was wrong that did it; we don't know. Just in case it happens to the five of us too, please be our backup memory. No matter what happens, remember 2005. Remember everything that this family has accomplished in fifty years."

"You can count on me, Mickey Mouse," Jiminy said with a smart salute. "Is there any—"

He was interrupted by a spate of shouting from Central Plaza. "Cheater!" Brer Rabbit was hollering, standing up on the bench and stretching as tall as he could. "Cheater! Cheater! There's a cheater right here!" he announced to all directions in turn, pointing at the cringing Pinocchio with one hand and amplifying his voice with the other. "Cheater! Cheater! Cheeeeaaaaateeeeeeerrrrrrrrr!"

Jiminy sighed. "I have to take care of this, Mickey."

"No problem, Jiminy," said Mickey. "We need to get started on our quest."

Hitching up his trousers, Jiminy catapulted back over to the bench and began chastising his young ward. "Now, Pinoke, what have I told you about cheating when you play cards?"

"But he started it!" Pinocchio complained over the rabbit's howls. ("Cheater! Cheater! Pinocchio's a cheater!")

"If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: two wrongs don't make a right."

"Well, gang," said Mickey. "What are we standing around here for? We've got crowns to find!"

To Be Continued…


	5. Chapter 5

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 5: The View From Above

The important thing, she knew, was to maintain her own sense of identity. And to avoid the Oubliettes, but that went without saying.

Of course, it was easier decided than achieved. It wasn't just that the sensory deprivation was distracting. Fluidity of thought was built into the very fabric of the realm; it practically _was_ it. Unrecorded ideas are subject to any amount of change, and she had been reduced to just such a thing—an idea, a potentiality, her existence dependent on the minds of those still in the real world. If they forgot her, her own will would be all that stood between her and the Oubliettes…a will that could not help but be fragile, in that ephemeral void of shifting thought.

As it was, it was all she could do to keep focused on herself.

She wondered how many of the others had already been lost, wiped out, removed even from the screen of possibility. Not that she cared. Nor would she ever know, since anything swallowed by an Oubliette was erased from _all_ memory, irretrievable. She would not miss what she had entirely forgotten was ever there.

But in all likelihood, they were all safe…as safe as they could be, anyway. That mouse was far too sentimental to let himself forget anyone, and his will was admittedly strong. It was not a foolproof protection—the active thoughts, not the passive, of those in the manifested world were what provided the only sure bulwarks against the Oubliettes. If one of the dread vortices were to come along while no living mind was consciously thinking of her, she would be vulnerable.

Fortunately for her, people rarely forget those who grievously wrong them.

The most important thing was to maintain her own sense of identity. _I am Maleficent. I am the Mistress of All Evil. Now I am the scourge of the Disney Family, the one who ripped them apart, friend from friend. They will never forget such a horror as I have wrought._

_Because my past is memorable, my future is assured._

* * *

It was said of Walt Disney that he would rather spend five hundred dollars on something at Disneyland that the public would see, than fifty cents on something they wouldn't. This was largely true. In the earliest years of the park, before the diorama attraction was installed, the interior of Sleeping Beauty's Castle was…a mess. Unfinished, dreadfully dusty, naked support beams everywhere, with rickety scaffolding left over from construction affording the maintenance workers their only access to the upper towers and balconies.

When Mickey carefully pushed open the door leading in from outside and let the bold light of day fall upon the grunge, the reaction of the Fab Five was unanimous:

"Yuck!"

Pluto sniffed gingerly at the floor and promptly sneezed on a snoutful of dust. He growled softly—apart from the dry odor of old dirt and the cloying scent of poorly ventilated paint, he smelled cat.

"Easy, boy," Mickey said with a gentle tug on Pluto's collar.

The five of them made their way in with cautious footsteps and wrinkled noses. Donald ran a finger over a disorganized work bench and grimaced as his white feathers came away blackish-brown. "Disgusting," he muttered.

Minnie stared up at the top of the scaffolding, hazy in the gloom of the unlit building. "I don't know about this, Mickey," she said tensely. "That doesn't look very safe at all."

"Aw, c'mon, Minnie," Mickey said warmly. "You're not gonna chicken out, are you?"

"Chicken out, no," was the reply. "Logically and rationally decide against this? Now, that I might do."

"I'm sure you'll be fine. It can't be as unstable as it looks."

"What makes you say that, Mickey?" asked Goofy.

"Because _nothing_ could actually be as unstable as _that_ looks. Besides, Minnie, you volunteered."

She chuckled nervously. "I did, didn't I? Anyone care to remind me why I had such a lapse of judgment?"

"Because you're the lightest and the most agile one of us," Mickey explained.

"…which wouldn't matter if this were safe!"

"You also have the best head for heights. Which is funny," Mickey continued, raising his voice, "because you'd think the _bird_ would."

Donald jumped to alertness from where he had been disapproving of the state of the floor. "Oh, ha, ha, ha," he sneered. "Very funny, wise guy."

Minnie giggled, relaxing slightly. "Well, here goes nothing," she said, gripping the scaffolding with both hands and putting one foot on the lowest crossbar. It creaked ominously, and a few pinches of grime pattered down from the joints, but the structure held steady. Blowing with relief, Minnie began climbing.

About five feet later, the scaffolding began to rock and groan. Minnie groaned also, clinging rigidly to her perch.

"It's okay, Minnie," Mickey said to her. "It's not as bad as it seems."

"That's easy for _you_ to say," she retorted. "You don't know _how_ bad it seems from up here! Are you _sure_ this is the best way to do this?

"It's the only way to do it," Mickey said. "Without the Matterhorn, the top of the Castle is the only decent vantage point for looking at the whole park at once. If any of the crowns are in the open, you should be able to spot them. It can't hurt to try."

"It can if I break my neck in the process," Minnie said wryly to herself. But she breathed deeply and continued.

Approximately halfway to the top—four yards from the floor—was a wooden platform about the size of a desktop. It looked sturdy, so Minnie let it take her weight as she pulled herself up over the edge—and found herself looking into a pair of huge yellow-green eyes.

Ordinarily, a surprise like that might have sent her into a brief, girlish panic. But she could only be afraid of one thing at a time, and the threat of falling was occupying her attention at the moment. So it didn't even occur to her to be startled until after she had realized that the eyes belonged to a cat, one of the feral ones that took up residence inside the Castle soon after it was built.

"Oops," she said kindly. "I didn't mean to intrude."

The cat, for its part, had not achieved its lofty station in life by bothering over small details. It made a soft sound of mild displeasure and moved to the opposite end of the platform, from where it gazed balefully at Minnie as she continued to climb.

From that point on, the scaffolding became much narrower—more like a ladder. Minnie knew she was entering the slender tallest tower of the Castle. A little arch of daylight above her indicated the location of the tiny window that led out onto a narrow embattlement circling the tower. The small space was claustrophobia-inducing, but on another level it was reassuring that no matter how much the scaffolding creaked and rattled, it could only sway a couple of feet in any direction.

Up and up, and it began to seem to Minnie that the climb was taking longer than it should. _Is this haunted room actually stretching?_ she thought ironically. At least she wasn't having to do it in the princess gown—their first stop on the quest had been home, to change out of their decorative clothes into more typical, and therefore more comfortable, outfits. It did make Minnie wish, however, that she had acclimated herself over the years to lower heels.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, she reached up and touched solid plaster instead of rusty steel or splintering wood. Heaving a huge sigh of relief, Minnie pulled herself up and crawled out the undersized window into the daylight.

Main Street looked very different from that elevation! So many of its atmospheric illusions depended on the viewer being at ground level, not least among them the forced perspective that made the quaint buildings look taller than they were. With the scaled-down upper floors at eye level, the structures looked not so much quaint as awkwardly proportioned.

But that wasn't what Minnie was there to look at. She stopped marveling at the view and began inching slowly around the tower, scanning the ground, the rooftops, everything in sight for traces of golden gleam. From time to time something caught her eye, but it always turned out to be a bit of gilt decoration that belonged there. After making a full circuit, she realized that she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary…but there were a few areas of the park that were still beyond her line of sight.

"Hey, Minnie!" Mickey's voice floated up out of the interior of the Castle. "Is everything okay up there?"

"Just fine!" she called back. "But I need to get a little bit higher!"

"Well, be careful!" Mickey admonished her.

Minnie turned her attention to the tower itself, which extended a good few yards yet above her current position. There was another embattlement almost within fingertip reach—if she could get that high, it would be an easy climb to the blue-tiled, conical roof of the turret.

She wasn't worried. Climbing dusty, decrepit scaffolding in the dark was difficult and nerve-wracking. Climbing a clean, sturdy, brightly colored castle tower in broad daylight was a different animal entirely. As if it were part of her daily routine, Minnie stepped up to the edge of the crenellated balcony, raised her arms, bent her knees, and _leaped_…

…and caught the edge of the upper embattlement. She hung for a moment, adjusting her grip, before pulling herself up onto the thin ledge. There was very little room to stand, but she wasn't planning on staying long. The top of the tower had a few "windows," chinks little more than a foot square, that made perfect handholds and footholds. In very short order, she was on the sharply slanting turret roof itself, and then at the tip-top of the cone, steadying herself with the gold-plated spire.

The wind was a little stronger than on the ground, but Minnie felt in no danger. It gave her a wholly pleasant thrill to be standing there, at the very pinnacle of Disneyland, some 75 feet up. It was oddly peaceful, with all the ground sounds (mostly the shouts and laughs of the oblivious characters cavorting in Fantasyland) filtered by distance into a quiet murmur that blended with the soft whistling of the breeze, punctuated by the occasional caw of a crow.

From so high up, she could really see everything. The whole of the park, from the farthest backwoods pocket of Frontierland to the easternmost corner of Tomorrowland, lay open to her gaze. How barren it all looked! Whole tracts of space were undeveloped, grassy, practically wild. The planted trees were fewer, and smaller, than she remembered them from 2005. Scarcely any of the really memorable attractions had been built—no Pirates of the Caribbean, no Space Mountain, no "it's a small world."

"Disneyland will never be complete," Walt had said, thereby giving his labor of love infinite room to grow. But there is a difference between merely not being finished, and actively being _un_finished…and in 1955, the park was a blatant example of the latter. Especially looked at with the advantage of hindsight.

Somewhere in Frontierland, something gleamed gold.

With a start, Minnie remembered why she was up there in the first place, what she was supposed to be looking for. Disneyland was incomplete, all right—and it would stay that way unless they found those five crowns! Minnie searched Frontierland until she saw it again: a tiny yellow flash from the far end of Tom Sawyer's Island, where a chance gap in the pine foliage allowed a sunbeam to reach the ground. It shone like a lighthouse beacon, a guide to safety.

On the other hand, it could be a fragment of amber glass from a beer bottle, dropped there by a passing magpie.

No, it wouldn't do to be pessimistic. Minnie decided to believe that the little glint _was_ one of the crowns. It was the only lead they had so far.

Suddenly overtaken with a sense of urgency to report the news, she put safety at the bottom of her list of priorities. Minnie let herself skid down the turret roof and drop, almost without impediment, to the lower embattlement.

"Mickey!" she squealed into the tower. "_MICKEY!_"

He probably shouted a reply, but by then she was already inside, propelling herself down the scaffolding so that it rattled like a bag of gravel poured down a garbage disposal.

It was this lack of care that resulted in her falling, though not as directly as one would assume.

The cat she had passed on the way up abruptly found its chosen perch shuddering and clattering in the most unsettling way. Digging its claws into the wooden platform for traction, it yowled and hissed, but to no avail. The scaffolding went on being noisy and unstable. Disgusted, the cat decided to take its chances jumping down to the floor to look for a new roost. The spot where it landed was unexpectedly warm and pliable.

This was because it was Pluto's back.

After the initial yelp of pinpricked surprise, Pluto exploded with rage. With much barking and growling and gnashing of teeth, he turned on the cat. The two of them began tearing around the enclosed space.

"No, Pluto! Stop it!" Mickey yelled ineffectually as dog chased cat around and between the scaffolding supports, unsteadying it even more.

"What's going on down there?" Minnie wailed, scarcely audible over the combined racket.

Finally the cat, figuring that even a shaky platform was a better prospect than being mauled, leapt to climb back up the structure. It reckoned without Pluto's persistence—the snarling canine sprang right up after it without regard for the fact that he had neither sharp claws nor opposable thumbs nor any other biological climbing equipment.

That, at last, was too much for the abused scaffolding to take. With a cacophonous chorus of squeals and crunches, it gave way, struts bending, timbers splitting, screws popping out to _ping_ off the walls, until the whole thing lay on the floor in a heap of dust and splinters and K-joints and severely contused Fab Five.

There was a long pause, punctuated by the wobbly clangs of some tardy bit of metal debris.

"Is everyone okay?" Mickey's voice asked from somewhere near the middle of the pile.

There was a shorter pause. Then came Minnie's voice, slow and tense. "That had better be Pluto's paw on my tush."

Bit by bit, they managed to extricate themselves from the rubble and survey the personal damage, which consisted of quite a lot of scrapes and bruises, plus two or three large and throbbing cranial lumps. The cat was nowhere to be seen, and was presumed to have escaped scot-free. Once it was determined that everyone was basically all right, Mickey asked Minnie what she had been able to see.

"I think I saw one of the crowns!" she announced joyfully. "On Tom Sawyer's Island. I saw a flash of gold, at least."

"Well, then, what are we waiting for?" Mickey crowed. "To Frontierland!"

"No," Minnie said pointedly. "To the shower. _Then_ to Frontierland."

"Right," Mickey chuckled.

* * *

Tinkerbell was troubled. It was only a very small trouble, but she was only a very small pixie, so it filled her and made her very troubled indeed. Creatures of Neverland, who are meant to be happy and carefree, do not handle such feelings well.

What was troubling her was nothing she could put her tiny, well-formed finger on. Things simply…felt out of place. She kept being vaguely surprised by what she saw as she flitted about the Fantasyland courtyard, as if she were expecting to see something else, but she had no idea what that might be. Her acrobatic reflexes were a little off-kilter, and she sometimes had the impression of being either boxed in or dangerously exposed…when she was neither.

It was as puzzling as it was disturbing, and Tinkerbell wanted to tell someone about it, but who? The only person who could reliably understand her speech was Peter Pan, and he never took anything seriously. The best she could hope for from him was a shrug and maybe a "Huh, that's weird. I wonder what it means," immediately after which he would drop it and go back to flying loop-the-loops above his attraction façade, and expect her to join in. If she brought it up again, he might laugh and say, "Are you _still_ on about that, Tink?" or he might have forgotten all about it. Either way, she would get nowhere with Peter.

She tried to put it out of her mind. Perhaps, she reasoned, she was just having an off day. Even fairies occasionally had them.

Fairies…fairies…something about fairies…

The Blue Fairy would be able to understand her, if she were around; fairy communication transcended all barriers of language or custom. But without a permanent "home" in the form of an attraction, the characters from _Pinocchio_ tended to be rather…peripatetic, and only the really central figures—Pinocchio himself and Jiminy Cricket—could usually be found at all. The same went for the characters from _Cinderella_—while the popular princess and her Prince Charming could often be seen dancing in the courtyard, as they were now, the Fairy Godmother was less accessible.

Tinkerbell cursed her luck at being the only Disney fairy so far not relegated to a secondary role. She paused in her contemplative flight to glance at Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Now there was a story with fairies to spare; she hoped the film, when it was complete, would introduce some fairies with more staying power as memorable characters to the Disney Family.

In the meantime, all she could do was flit, and frolic, and be troubled. And wonder why she couldn't stop thinking about crowns…

* * *

Five characters stood before the entrance to Frontierland, taken a little aback. The breeze that blew out through the log palisade gateway and ruffled the authentic antique flag on its pole was warm and dry and tinged with a tantalizing mélange of thematic odors—dust and straw and pine needles and sun-beaten leather and unfinished wood and, most beguiling of all, the pervasive, musky tang of horses.

This was to be expected. In the early days, the guests had been more adventurous (and less litigious!), and Frontierland could afford to be a fairly authentic vision of the Wild West, with unpaved ground and live animals and other unpredictable elements. However…

"It seems stronger than I remember it," said Donald. He wrinkled his beak. "A _lot_ stronger."

"It seems that way to me too," Minnie agreed, "but I think we just aren't used to it anymore."

"It's psychological," said Mickey. "The wind today is hot and dry, like in the desert. It enhances the illusion of an Old West town."

"Ain't we goin' in?" Goofy wondered. "Why're we all just standin' here? Call me goofy, but it doesn't seem like a very good way of gettin' that crown."

"Right!" Mickey said, sticking out his chest. "C'mon, gang!"

And the five of them, collectively far more apprehensive than they ought to have been, strode forward through the gateway.

Ultimately, they found much more in Frontierland than they had even known they were looking for.

To Be Continued…


	6. Chapter 6

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 6: Weirdness in the Wild West

To underscore the point, there was nothing _wrong_ with Frontierland per se. That wasn't the problem at all. Every prop, from the barrels outside the dry goods store to the genuine hide tepees in the Indian village, was the right size and shape and in the right place. What made the Fab Five feel hair-raising (and in one case feather-raising) apprehension was nothing that would show up in a photograph…or, for that matter, any scientific measuring device of any kind.

Without any single element seeming bigger, or brighter, or bolder, or indeed different in any expressible way, Frontierland felt somehow _more_ than it ought to have been. The sharper smells could very well be due to some quirk of the weather—unseasonably low barometric pressure, say, or abnormally high humidity. But no prosaic atmospheric fluctuation could account for the eerie sense, almost subliminal, that the area wasn't as empty as it appeared…that lurking just out of sight around every corner were…the _real_ cowboys.

So what was wrong with that? Frontierland was _supposed_ to feel like that! Walt had spent a great deal of _money_ to make it that way! But that was just it. People who have been a long time in show business know how to see through the kind of "authenticity" that can be bought. This was not that kind of authenticity. It was the kind of authenticity that comes only as the result of being, in fact, authentic.

So it was that, for no reason they could put a finger to, the Fab Five clustered together as they walked down Frontierland's main avenue. They were aware of the incongruity of keeping so close when normally the wide-open spaces of the area invited people to spread out and relax. But the impulse to huddle could not be dismissed through rationality because it was not born of the rational mind. It was much more visceral than that, the reaction of true red-white-and-blue-blooded Americans to the essence of their cultural heritage, recognized through something akin to racial memory.

All Americans know, instinctively, that the popular view of the Old West as depicted by Hollywood bears only a distant relationship to the truth. They know, even if they don't know that they know, that even the most carefully researched and faithfully reproduced movie cowboy is only a pale, sanitized imitation of the _real_ ones, who were harsh, reckless men who drank whiskey like it was water and took baths the way their descendants take dental appointments—twice a year and with dread. A modern American's feelings about meeting such a person will be at best mixed, and Mickey Mouse and his friends were as quintessentially American as someone listening to rock-and-roll while eating apple pie baked by a baseball player.

Oddly enough, it was Donald who finally mustered enough clearness of head to break the spell. Standing up straight, he averred, "This is ridiculous. What are we all so afraid of?"

The others stopped dead in their creeping tracks and gave him their attention. "No matter what year this is, or how it got that way, it's only Frontierland, right?" Donald continued. "We're falling for our own hype!"

"Gosh, Donald, you really think so?" Mickey asked.

"_Here's_ what I think!" Donald replied, kicking a pebble on the dirt path hard enough to send it tumbling with a _plop_ into the Rivers of America. He spent the next several seconds hopping on one foot and howling a streak as blue as his cap while he nursed his bruised toe, but as soon as the smarting subsided, he planted both feet and folded his arms across an outthrust chest. A smug smile topped off the ensemble.

"I know I don't say this very often, but Donald's right," Minnie said. "We're letting this whole situation get to us. I'm not sure what we all keep dreading, but whatever it is, it's…well, it's silly. There's nothing here that wasn't here in 1955."

"You mean like the Rafts to Tom Sawyer's Island?" said Goofy innocently, pointing to the water's edge.

They all stared. Something was conspicuously absent from the riverbank.

"Where's the raft dock?" Donald squawked.

"Oh, no, I forgot!" Mickey yelped, smacking his own forehead. "The island wasn't an attraction until the _second_ summer! We've got no ride across!"

"Gawrsh," Goofy mused dejectedly.

"Well, I guess it could be worse," Mickey went on philosophically. "Go ahead, Donald. Hop in."

Donald was the very personification of skepticism. "Hop in?" he repeated incredulously.

"Well, sure!" said Mickey with an ingratiating smile. "You're a duck, aren't you? It's only about fifty feet to the island—swimming that should be a piece of cake for you! Heck, I've seen the regular ducks do it in under a minute, and you're _much_ bigger than they are!"

"Ha! _What_ 'regular ducks'?" Donald argued, gesturing expansively at the water. Sure enough, the common mallards that usually populated the Rivers of America, growing tame and prosperous on the popcorn and French fries thrown to them by amused guests, were nowhere to be seen. (First the guests themselves, then the Cast Members, now the not-so-wildlife…it seemed to be a trend.)

"Anyway," Donald went on, "what kind of duck do you think I am? Not the kind that paddles around on top of the water, that's for sure!"

"You're still the best at swimming," Mickey reasoned. "How could you not be, with those big webbed feet?"

Donald heaved a huge sigh and, grumbling, slapped his hat down on a convenient horse hitch.

"Thanks, Donald," said Mickey. "I'll make it up to you."

"Just remember to let us know when you figure out what _you're_ the best at, so you can do some of your own dirty work for a change. First you send Minnie up the Castle, and now this," the duck replied sardonically. But his expression was more wry than disgruntled and he winked as he finished speaking. Then he marched right up to the very edge of the Rivers of America, put his palms together, bounced his knees a few times, waggled his tail feathers, and dove into the dingy green water.

He knew something was going wrong before he was even fully wet. The river seemed to be…it was a nonsensical thought, but it felt like the water was _changing shape_ around him, and not just in the sense of fluid dynamics. And when he surfaced from his dive, he discovered the true horror of his situation.

Somehow—he could not even begin to speculate how—the placid manmade waterway, technically more lake than river, had become _real_. The Rivers of America had transformed into…the great rivers of America, whose gathered waters had on Opening Day dedicated their manufactured namesake to the memory of the great explorers who, in centuries past, first charted those famous courses. It was no currentless canal, a mere fifty feet across, that had Donald in its grasp. It was the Missouri, draining the broad agricultural plains of the Midwest, and the Ohio, doing the same for the Northeast. It was the Columbia, gateway to the Pacific Ocean. It was the Rio Grande, drawing the line between Tex and Mex, made famous in song. It was the Colorado, no broader in places than a four-lane highway but so swift and powerful that it had carved the Southwestern landscape a mile deep into the Grand Canyon. Most of all, though, it was the mighty Mississippi, the very queen of American rivers, whose enormous southbound flow had made possible the commerce that financed the infant United States.

It was all of these at one and the same time, and yet it still managed to also be the humble Rivers of America in Disneyland. Donald could see, through growing panic and confusion, the rest of the Fab Five standing on the shore, watching him with faintly puzzled expressions. But that shore was hundreds of yards away and growing more distant as the powerful currents swept him downstream. Big webbed feet notwithstanding, he was helpless to swim against the tug of so many waters combined…and the surge was getting rougher. There would be whirlpools in the depths.

He might have drowned had Goofy not calmly reached out, taken hold of his middy collar, and fetched him back to dry land. He lay sprawled on the ground for a moment, coughing and panting and reorienting himself, while the others looked on in baffled concern.

"Uh, Donald…" Mickey said, and cleared his throat before continuing. "Not to criticize, but do you…have you…what I'm trying to say is…did you, maybe, you know, forget how to swim?"

"No!" Donald exclaimed, sitting up. "It was _huge_! And there was all this water, and—"

"How much of it did you swallow on the way in?" Minnie asked doubtfully.

"Take a look for yourself!" the frantic duck insisted, pointing at the river…

…which was completely back to normal. The far bank was only a few dozen feet away, the water calm except for the residual ripples of Donald's thrashing.

"Huh? Where did it go?" Donald wondered.

"Where did _what_ go, Donald?" asked Mickey. "The only unusual thing we saw when you jumped in was, well, you flopping around like a really confused fish."

"I'm not crazy, if that's what you're implying," Donald said petulantly. "I'm telling you, it was a gigantic river! It went on for miles and I was way, way out in it!" His arms flailed with agitation.

"There is definitely something strange going on here," Mickey said thoughtfully. "Something _else_ strange, I mean."

"Goofy," said Minnie, "when you pulled Donald out, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?"

Goofy screwed his face up and rubbed his chin with one hand, as he always did when called upon to think. "Hmmmmm…" he drawled. "You know what? Now you mention it, I did feel kinda like I was leanin' awfully far to grab someone who was right close to the edge. But I thought I was just havin' a little bit of verteego from all the excitement."

Curious, Mickey stepped up to the very brink of the Rivers of America and carefully shifted his balance so that the upper half of his body extended out over the water. He was too short for it to amount to much, but even so he was struck by a disconcerting sense of enormous open space. It seemed to radiate off the water's surface, as though the clay-lined trench contained a lot more river than was visible. (Not a lot more water, but a lot more _river_, which is an important distinction.) And when he bent down ever so cautiously and let his fingertip barely brush the wavering murky liquid, he could _see_ it—a grand majestic expanse, so vast that he couldn't even make out the far shore…except that he could see it plainly, because the intervening miles fit quite comfortably in the span filled by the Rivers of America. Impossibly, both scenes—the one cozy, the other immense—occupied exactly the same space. Both were equally present, equally real. Trying to reconcile the conflicting views was dizzying; Mickey very carefully retreated from the water's edge lest he lose his balance. As he did so, he watched the Mississippi—or whatever it was—fade, its hugeness dwindling, until Frontierland's waterway was once again the safe, manageable Rivers of America and nothing else.

"Gosh," Mickey breathed. "Donald's right. There's a huge river in there after all. I've never seen anything like it."

"How will we get across?" Donald wondered.

"I don't know," Mickey sighed. His expression turned steely. "But there _must_ be a way! Maleficent said the crowns are within reach. I'll figure out how to get to that island if I have to stand here until the solution finds _me_!"

As if consciously in response to the mouse's resolute statement, a sound broke out over the gently rippling water. In fact it was a sound that they had heard several times since entering Frontierland without thinking anything of it…because never during fifty years of their experience, except for comparatively brief stretches involving maintenance, had Frontierland been without it. It was almost background noise, a sound they took for granted, Its absence would have been a deafening clamor.

It was the low, mellow blast of the steam whistle on a paddlewheel-driven riverboat. Simultaneous with the distinctive note, the plume of steam that caused it became visible over the hump of Tom Sawyer's Island, and a moment later, the source of both—the magnificent _Mark Twain_—came gliding around the bend in the Rivers of America. Spotlessly white despite the constant rinsing by the grimy river water, it gleamed under the afternoon sun. As it approached, the steady chug-chug of its twin smokestacks—the heartbeat of the massive paddlewheeler, pacing out the rhythm of its stately progress—could be heard.

At the sight (and sound) of it, Mickey's face broke into a beaming grin. "Of course!" he cheered. "Why didn't any of us think of the _Mark Twain_? C'mon, gang, let's go!" Without even waiting for an answer, he took off at a run for the boarding dock, leaving the rest of them little choice but to follow.

They arrived at the dock just as the elegant steamboat was cruising to a halt. The three decks—as they had come to expect by now—were empty of passengers and crew alike, but _someone_ had to be driving the boat and blowing the whistle, and someone was—one Cast Member, his face obscured, stood in the wheelhouse on the uppermost "Texas" deck. Glad as the Fab Five were to see some signs of non-animated life at last, they had to wonder—why this guy?

Pluto suddenly began barking wildly and lunging for the boat. Mickey was barely able to restrain him. "Whoa, boy! Not so fast!"

"So what's the plan, Mickey?" asked Minnie.

"I'll explain on the way up to the wheelhouse," said Mickey. "All aboard!"

The five of them trooped across the dock and onto the riverboat, cautious of their footing as the unmoored vessel drifted slightly on its own wake.

"I hope you don't think we'll be able to _ride_ across the river," Minnie said to Mickey as they headed for the nearest staircase. "You know this thing's on a track."

"I know," Mickey explained, "but it's the best we can do. We'll have the driver stop the boat at the point where the track passes closest to the island. Then we'll make a bridge to cover the rest of the distance."

They reached the mezzanine deck. "Make a bridge? Out of what?" Minnie pointed out.

"I haven't gotten that far yet," Mickey confessed. "But don't worry; we'll find something. If we have to, we'll dock again and go _get_ something."

"But Mickey," said Donald, "what if the river turns real again?"

"Well, uh…then we won't be on a track anymore!" Mickey reasoned brightly, although the logic was not ironclad.

They scaled another set of stairs, emerging onto the Texas deck behind the wheelhouse. Pluto was practically frantic by now, whining and straining against Mickey's hold on his collar.

"What's gotten into you this time, boy?" Mickey asked with a chuckle. "Did someone leave a steak up here?"

Pluto wrenched free and charged at the wheelhouse, barking so loudly and rapidly that he sounded like a canine machine gun. "Why, is that—?" the boat driver said, turning to face them.

It was a moment Mickey would always be able to recall with crystal clarity, especially on nights when his dreams walked the uneasy line between fantasies and nightmares. He pulled up short, his jaw dropping, and stared. And stared some more. And kept staring, even after his eyes had misted over to uselessness.

"Oh, hello there, Mickey," said Walt Disney, patting an ecstatic Pluto on the head.

* * *

He looked shockingly young, even above and beyond the shock of seeing him in the first place. Mickey's last memories of his creator were of a man not only a decade older than the apparition now before him, but seriously ill as well. But there was no mistaking that pointed nose, or those laugh-lined cheeks, or that fussy little mustache…or the twinklingest pair of eyes that ever graced a human face.

"Walt…" whispered Mickey, the only one of the Fab Five not struck entirely dumb by the encounter.

"I was just taking the _Mark_ out for a little spin," Walt said conversationally. "Sorry if I startled you all. So, how are things?"

"Uhhhhhh…" Mickey stammered, "…h-hard to say, really."

Walt raised an eyebrow. "Is something wrong?"

_Well, yes, actually, Walt—you've been dead for almost forty years and a character from a movie you haven't made yet is trying to destroy Disneyland via time manipulation_. Even an imagination like Walt Disney's would be hard put by to swallow that, put so bluntly. Mickey settled for saying, "Sort of…we need to get over to the island, but there's no ra—uh, no free-moving boat available. We were hoping the _Mark_ would at least get us close enough that we could jump or string a rope or something."

"No problem, then," Walt grinned. "To tell the truth, I was hoping for an excuse to take her around again. I think I know just the spot, too. So kick back and enjoy the scenery." And with that, he turned back to the controls of his very own life-sized toy steamboat, clanged the bell, and started up the boiler. The _Mark Twain_ lurched to life again.

A moment passed while the paddlewheeler picked up speed.

"So then!" Mickey chirped with forced cheerfulness. "Let's all go kick back and enjoy the scenery, just like Walt said!"

They dispersed, still looking rather dazed, and took up various posts around the deck, ostensibly watching the landscape of Frontierland pass by. Mickey hung around by the wheelhouse for a few minutes, trying to work up the nerve to speak to the creator whom he had missed so dearly for so long. But he couldn't think of a thing to say that would mean anything to the 1955 version of Walt. It was a cruel irony, after all the times Mickey had fervently wished for the chance to see the old boy just once more, that the chance should come in such a fashion.

Finally, he gave up and wandered toward the bow, where Minnie stood leaning on the railing, lost in her own thoughts. Mickey noticed that her hands were trembling.

"You all right?" he asked, sotto voce.

"I will be," she replied in the same tone. "It's just…I wasn't prepared for this!"

"Neither was I," he said. "But maybe we should just appreciate it for what it is. _He_ seems to be." He nodded back mid-ship, where Pluto was cavorting in circles around the wheelhouse as Walt gleefully blew the steam whistle and pretended to steer the track-bound boat.

"Sometimes I really envy that dog," Minnie said wistfully. "Living in the moment, never worrying about any problem unless it's right in front of him."

"Actually, I was talking about Walt. Look at him; he's like a kid on Christmas."

"Of course he is: he doesn't know anything is wrong. I don't think he's even noticed that there aren't any guests. And that makes me wonder: if there are no guests or Cast Members, for whatever reason, then why is he here?"

"He belongs here," Mickey said almost automatically. "He's as much a part of this place as any one of us. Cast Members come and go, but Walt…it's almost like he's an attraction in himself. Why _shouldn't_ he be here, in the right time period?"

"That's so crazy, it might just make sense," Minnie quipped, and Mickey knew she would be all right. She was as sentimental as the next mouse, but she was emotionally resilient.

"I should go see—" Mickey started to say, but before he could finish the sentence ("—how the guys are doing."), the _Mark Twain_ abruptly slowed in the water and coasted to an unsteady stop. Walt had shut off the boiler.

"I guess we're here," said Minnie.

"I guess so," Mickey concurred.

Walt exited the wheelhouse and approached them a hint of sheepishness in his grin. "One of these days," he said, "I'll get the hang of braking this thing. We're a little past where I meant to stop, but hopefully you'll still be able to reach the shore without getting your feet wet."

"Thanks, Walt," Mickey said with a wistful smile. "Listen…we don't know how long this is going to take. How long can you wait?"

"As long as you need," Walt replied. "You may not believe this, but I've actually got nothing but time today. Anyway, I could really do with a smoke about now."

Deliberately, and with great care, Mickey bit his tongue. Inside, he was yelling in protest, and making a vow to sign on as spokesmouse for the American Heart and Lung Association as soon as he got back to the 21st Century. And he wondered: what if he _did_ convince Walt, here and now, to quit smoking? Would it change anything?

Would it even be wise to try?

Mickey forced such thoughts into the background. The quest to restore Disneyland was monumental enough without worrying about the twisted science-fiction ramifications he might unleash _if_ he were foolish enough to try changing the past. One thing at a time!

On that note, Mickey waved the others toward the nearest staircase and started thinking about how to cross the gap to the island.

To Be Continued…


	7. Chapter 7

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 7: The First Advance

The _Mark Twain_ floated on the river near the halfway point of its usual circuit, alongside a small protrusion of land at the north end of the island. The Imagineers had built the boat's track to maintain a more-or-less constant distance from the island's shore, but even they couldn't make it parallel the smallest features while still accommodating the paddlewheeler's massive hull. The gap between land and vessel was only eight or nine feet at this point—hardly an insurmountable distance, but just broad enough to be tricky, especially with the deck railings in the way, preventing them from jumping with a running start.

Mickey leaned against one of said railings and frowned at the island. A cursory search of the boat had turned up nothing that could potentially be used to bridge the space. The mooring ropes were not only quite a bit too short, but firmly secured to the wrong side of the deck. No part of the fancy ironwork that embellished the _Mark Twain_ could be readily detached.

"If it comes to it," Minnie said reassuringly, "I don't mind swimming."

"Well, _I_ do," Donald grumbled. "I'm not going whitewater rafting without a raft again!"

"Gawrsh, Donald, do you think it'll happen again?" Goofy winced.

"That's just it," said Mickey. "It might, or it might not…I won't risk it. I don't know _what's_ going on with this river, but it's gotta be related to Maleficent's spell somehow, and that means it's trouble for us. Nobody's touching that water if we can possibly avoid it."

"But what else can we do?" wondered Minnie.

Mickey sighed. "We may have to ask Walt to take us back to the dock so we can go get something to make into a bridge. I'm sure the General Store has some building supplies, even if they're only supposed to be for decoration. Lucky thing the Imagineers pay such attention to detail, huh?"

"Yeah, yeah, hooray for realism," Donald scowled. "Do you think we'll have time to backtrack like that? It's getting to be late afternoon, and I don't want to have to look for that crown in the dark."

"Donald, you're the one who doesn't want to swim," Minnie pointed out.

"_Nobody_ is going swimming!" Mickey reminded them, growing uncharacteristically petulant.

Meanwhile, Goofy was squinting at the shore, counting on his fingers, spreading his arms wide and looking back and forth along their span, and shaking his shoulders like pistons. All this went completely unnoticed by the others until he spoke up. "Hey, fellas—maybe I could _throw_ you all over!"

The semi-argument stopped cold.

"That was weird," said Mickey. "I just thought I heard Goofy say he'd throw us over."

"I _did_ say that, Mickey," Goofy explained. "I've been workin' it out. You're all pretty light, and I've still got my pitchin' arm from back when I used to do sports cartoons. It should be no trouble at all!"

As it worked out, it was more like caber tossing than baseball pitching. One at a time, Goofy picked up the other four, backed up all the way up to the far railing, crossed the deck in a few short bounds, picking up speed, and launched them with both hands. Each described a lovely parabola in the air before landing roughly on the dusty ground. Finally, Goofy was the only one of the Fab Five still onboard the _Mark Twain_.

"Great work, Goofy!" Mickey called back across the yards. "But how will you get across?"

Hardly had he spoken before Goofy moved back to the other railing and charged forward once more. When he reached the closer edge of the deck, he made a little hopping jump, folded himself up, put his big floppy hands under his bigger floppier feet, and somehow launched _himself_ across the span of water just as he had the others, in a display that on the scale of violations of physical laws, was somewhere between armed robbery and negligent manslaughter.

Well, if anyone could get away with cosmological felonies, it was Goofy.

Even so, he landed a bit short and came to rest lying full-length at the river's edge, with his legs from the knees down actually trailing in the water. He raised his head and made a sheepish "A-hyuk!"

"I gotta say, Goofy," Mickey observed, "When you do come up with a bright idea, it's usually a doozy!"

"And _I_ gotta say that Donald was right," Minnie teased. "When _are_ you going to pitch in and do something besides give orders, Mickey?"

"We'll see how it goes," Mickey replied impishly, helping Goofy to his dampened feet. "So, Minnie, where did you say that crown was?"

Minnie recalled. "It should be close by. Where those trees are."

The trees in question were scarcely worthy of the name. No more than fifteen feet tall, they were part of the minimal landscaping that time and budget allowed for when Tom Sawyer's Island was first constructed. There were no clear paths; the shrubs and native grasses that covered the low hill were allowed to grow unchecked, the better to fill the undeveloped space and make it look wild and woodsy. That, combined with the unevenness of the ground and the steep grade of the artificial hill, made the short trek to the small grove of pine trees a bit of a hike. Though the sun was well on the way to setting, merciless heat, stored over the course of the day, radiated from the poorly shaded soil as from an oven when the door is suddenly opened.

There is a subtle but important line separating calculated realism from true authenticity. The Fab Five were learning, as they pushed their way through sagebrush and stumbled over small boulders, that _most_ of Disneyland's crafted environments hugged that line closely but never actually crossed it. The exception was the island during that first year. It was startling to discover that verisimilitude, that elusive quality for which the park was famous, was desirable only up to a point.

After several silent, panting minutes, the group arrived at the trees. The shade was a welcome sight, but not half as welcome as the crown, the Mouseketeer Crown, which rested on the carpet of shed pine needles as though someone had simply forgotten it there.

* * *

Mickey stopped himself in the tenth of a second before he lunged for the crown. Something, perhaps unsurprisingly, was not right.

"Why's it so small?" Goofy asked no one in particular.

It was true. When they had last seen it—in the last instant before it was dragged into Maleficent's black void—the Mouseketeer Crown had of course been large enough to comfortably fit a turret on Sleeping Beauty's Castle, several feet in diameter. But the object before them was a much more prosaic size. Mickey himself could have worn it without incident.

"We'd better be careful. It might be a decoy," Minnie observed.

"A pretty obvious one if it is," Donald remarked.

Pluto crept forward, body low to the ground, eyes locked on the crown as though he were stalking it. He sniffed it gingerly, taking care not to let his twitching nose quite contact the diamond-encrusted gold. After a moment of this, he relaxed, looked back over his shoulder, and barked a happy all-clear.

Mickey's held breath _whoosh_ed out of him. "Great job, pal!" he cheered, hurrying forward. "I don't know how it got so small, but I trust your nose!" He stooped to pick up the crown, and two surprising things happened.

The first was that he missed. No, _not_ missed—the agile cartoon star could never be so clumsy as to miss an unmoving target right at his feet. His hands had passed through it exactly as if it were not even there. But it was there. They all saw it, and no mere optical illusion could look so solid, could exhibit such a detailed play of sunlight over its molded surface. No mirage could have a tiny lip of powdery soil encroaching up its sides where it had pushed aside the dirt when, by whatever means, it was placed there.

The other thing that happened, simultaneous with the first, was that Mickey's right shorts pocket suddenly began vibrating at a high pitch, so vigorously that the others noticed it and sauntered over to look.

"Your cell phone?" Goofy asked.

"In 1955?" Mickey scoffed, reaching into his pocket to investigate. His hand touched metal, and brought out another crown, smaller, simpler: the crown handed to him by the Queen of Hearts on the Castle drawbridge, hours that already felt like days ago. It was humming, nearly soundless but so intensely that it sent violent tremors up through Mickey's hands all the way to his shoulders. He had the impression of holding onto one end of a huge rubber band that had been stretched and plucked; there was a _tension_ in the air between the two crowns, drawing the one toward the other.

He didn't fight it. He let the moment and the momentum carry him, and the two crowns made contact.

And exploded.

At least, _something_ apparently exploded. They were never sure exactly _what_ happened, even though it ultimately happened several more times. The space under the immature pine trees was bathed in an exquisite golden-white light that was also a wind, because it buffeted the verdant branches overhead and stirred the spent brown needles and dust underfoot as it emanated in waves from the two crowns. As the brilliance washed over the Fab Five, it felt to them like a thundering cataract of pure joy, both familiar and unfamiliar, made up of…of…

As suddenly as it had begun, it stopped, leaving them awestruck and bemused.

Donald was the first to speak, the words dropping slowly from his beak. "What was _that_?"

Mickey shook his head, panting from the experience. "I don't know, but…" He trailed off, looking down at the crown in his hands. It was the Mouseketeer Crown, now a comfortably real weight on his palms and fingers. The Queen of Hearts' crown had disappeared.

Or had it…? Turning the other crown over and over, Mickey had a suspicion…but it was hard to formulate. The thing in his hands kept distracting him with its peculiar presence. It was still buzzing, much more low-key than before, and now it was not the oscillation of a plucked rubber band but the singing of a wineglass when a wet finger is drawn around its rim. The sun had sunk low, and the apricot-colored light added a rosy luster to the gold.

A piece of the crown was missing from the bottom edge, but Mickey wasn't bothered. The awkward notch corresponded with the gleaming bit that had been left behind on the Castle turret.

Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he could _feel_ the decade that the crown represented, seething inside its physical form, ten years of memories and achievements and lessons learned yearning to break free from their jeweled prison and resume their normal place in the stream of time. Maleficent had been right—history itself was bound up in the crown.

"So what do we do now?" Minnie's voice broke through his reverie.

"Get this thing back to the Castle, I imagine," Mickey replied. Strangely, he felt exhausted and invigorated at the same time, as if he and the crown were engaged in mutual energy-vampirism. "Let's go!"

The _Mark Twain_ couldn't move fast enough to satisfy Mickey. It had been designed for safety and appearance, not speed—but even a high-powered speedboat would have been too slow for the sense of urgency he felt. He didn't even wait for the paddlewheeler to reach the dock, but perched on the boarding gate and jumped while the outside bank was still farther away than his own height. He set off at a dead run for Central Plaza and the Castle, the Mouseketeer Crown tucked under one arm like a priceless football, not even caring that he was leaving the others far behind. They would catch up.

Even his good-bye to Walt, while the boat was still a good way up the river from the dock, was rushed. But that was only partly because of his hurry.

He wondered briefly, as he drew near to the Castle, eliciting pop-eyed stares from the three characters still amusing themselves with card games in the Plaza, just how fast he was going. Twenty miles per hour? Twenty-five? More? He felt like he was flying, friction with the ground something that only happened to other people. He wished he _could_ fly, because he had no idea how he was going to reach the turret where the crown actually belonged. If only Pluto hadn't collapsed the scaffolding inside…

He wondered how it was going to fit around the tower when it was small enough for him to wear.

As Mickey reached the drawbridge, inspiration struck. With hardly a break in his stride, he sprang up onto the low concrete guard wall that protected pedestrians from falling into the moat, took hold of the crown with his tail, and began climbing one of the banner poles that lined the walkway. When he reached the top, he balanced on the crosspiece and hopped to the next one, which brought him within reach of a slim, cross-shaped decorative cutout in the wall, just below the main parapet of the Castle and a scant few feet from the turret where the Mouseketeer Crown belonged.

Dangling by one hand from the decorative arrow slit, his other hand and his feet unable to find purchase, the crown an awkward weight on his tail, Mickey suddenly considered that maybe he had been too hasty. He was not so high up at this point that a fall would be too damaging—not to him at least, though the crown was another story. It _would_ be painful. But it wasn't as though he could turn back. His _need_ to return the crown to its place was almost overwhelming, and he could still sense the ten-year stretch of time pulsating inside it, pleading to be freed. He began to feel a vicarious desperation.

So close…

Mickey took a moment to catch his breath, let the crown slip to the very end of his tail, so that one small loop of the appendage was all that kept it from dropping ignominiously onto the stony drawbridge or into the grimy moat, and began to swing his body from side to side, pendulum-style, using the crown's weight to give himself momentum. With every vacillation, there was an instant of fear as his fingers, precarious enough without the movement, shifted inside the arrow slit and threatened to slip out. But the apex of every arc was higher than the previous one, and the edge of the embattlement was _right there_, and Mickey grabbed for it with his free hand and caught it, and his feet braced against the rough stones and he heaved himself over the edge onto the parapet.

He sat panting for a moment. Voices drifted up to him from the area of the drawbridge: the rest of the Fab Five, only just arriving. Had his climb taken so little time, then? It already felt like a dream he was waking up from.

Mickey stood and waved triumphantly to his friends down below. Then he took the crown in both hands and turned to face the turret. The gold circlet, so heavy a moment before, felt as light as a cloud. Mickey made a gentle tossing motion, and it rose up out of his hands as if under its own power, floated through the air like a pop fly in slow motion, and hooked itself nearly over the gilt spire.

* * *

It was as if the whole world lurched around him. Mickey dropped to his hands and knees and braced himself against the peculiar sensation that existence itself was hurtling past him at an astonishing speed _in all directions at once_. It was like a fantastically powerful, absolutely steady wind that registered directly in his brain, bypassing his skin altogether. There was a sound too, also reminiscent of the roar of wind, but with a musical undertone like the most flawlessly formed crystal bell. It made his teeth rattle and his sinuses buzz, though not unpleasantly.

It was the sound of time passing, sped up by a factor of more than half a million. The normal pitch of this sound is so very low as to be quite undetectable by any living ear, and must be discerned in the bones. It was Mickey's bones that recognized it in its vastly accelerated state.

He dared to open his eyes and watch.

The first thing he saw was the trees visibly growing, in a spectacle that made the most carefully executed time-lapse photography look like Jared Fogle's Before and After pictures. Buds swelling into leaves unfurling at the tips of twigs lengthening and thickening into branches putting forth new buds swelling into leaves…and all of it happening with perfect, smooth continuity, free of gaps or jumps or breaks. It was magnificent to see!

As Mickey was marveling, a gleam of white just to the left of the Tomorrowland gates captured his attention. And what he saw there was so extraordinary that he forgot, for the moment, all about the trees.

There beside the parade route, something was sprouting—something quite large. White and mushroom-like, it bulged upward from the asphalt and then spread out at the top into a four-lobed cap that nagged at Mickey's memory. The outlines of the thing became sleeker, sharper, more angular, and the four sections of the cap, now block-shaped, split top and bottom to reveal shining…windows?

It was the House of the Future!

Mickey felt almost scandalized. There was no mistaking the building's form—it was the Monsanto Corporation's famous "all-plastic house," whose most heavily publicized feature was that it was synthetic, inorganic…yet he had just watched it _grow_ out of the paved ground like a plant! Before he could even try to make sense of what he had witnessed, he was distracted again.

Just northeast of the self-contradicting house, the low, flat-topped hill of soil called, variously, Holiday Hill, Lookout Mountain, or Snow Hill was shuddering and rumbling. Huge cracks opened in its sides, and with a great _whoosh_, the whole thing crumbled to the ground, taking its picnic tables and benches with it but leaving a lumpy grey core that rose and rose until it was more than twice as tall as its predecessor. A gust of wind blasted the new structure, frosting the top of it with snow (and blowing away the dusty remains of Holiday Hill)…and it was the Matterhorn.

It was happening all over the park. Graceful and gleaming, the _S.S. Columbia_ floated up from the murkiness of the Rivers of America and unfurled the Stars and Stripes from its main mast. In Tomorrowland, what looked at first like thick vines snaked out of the ground, intertwined, and rigidified into the coiling Monorail track. At the Adventureland gate, bamboo stalks and palm fibers plaited themselves into the Enchanted Tiki Room. And everywhere, signs were changing, some of them more than once—shapes altering, new colors sweeping across their faces, words blurring into illegibility and refocusing as completely different ones.

Disneyland was developing itself! Displaced in its own history, it wasn't being built, it was _growing_, like a living thing! It was dizzying to witness, not least because throughout, Mickey still had to contend with the rushing sensation and sound as time catapulted by. All told, ten years passed in what seemed like ten minutes. By the time things snapped back to normalcy, Mickey was quite breathless from the experience.

"Wow," he said in a tiny voice. Slowly, he rose to his feet and gazed out at the transformed park. A lot had changed in those first ten years!

The visible progress was immensely encouraging. Between the dominating Matterhorn, the winding Monorail track, and the spreading canopy of the _Disneydendron semperflorens grandis_ in Adventureland (with the Swiss Family Treehouse nestled in its branches), the park's skyline already looked significantly more modern. But that was only the beginning. There were less obvious but equally important changes afoot in 1965, as well as wonders shortly to be revealed. Mr. Lincoln was firmly established in the Opera House, the first of a new breed of lifelike human-shaped audio-animatronics. At the northern edge of Disneyland, the sprawling patterned façade of "it's a small world" was taking shape, while the entirely new land of New Orleans Square (Pirates of the Caribbean! The Haunted Mansion!) was close to completion between Adventureland and Frontierland.

And in Tomorrowland, the very air was charged with anticipation. The ground had only just been broken behind the construction barriers, but the New Tomorrowland—an exciting update to the park's unique vision of the future—was right around the corner.

He turned to look at the Mouseketeer Crown on its turret. It had expanded back to its full magnificent size and settled into its proper place on the embattled stones of the tower. But something was still out of place on the spire—

"Well done, Mickey Mouse," said a coldly mellifluous voice behind him.

Mickey whipped around, already knowing what he would see, and was not disappointed. _She_ stood there, as tall and malignant as ever, in just the same spot she had been when she instigated the whole mess.

"Maleficent!" Mickey yelped, feeling horrendously exposed and vulnerable. He fought the urge to shrink away from her.

Her right hand was outstretched, but not in threat or any other gesture; she seemed to be studying it with an almost beatific smile on her angular face. She remained thus for a moment, turning the hand this way and that, alternately fanning and curling the graceful spidery fingers, before acknowledging Mickey again.

"I suppose the genteel thing to do, under such circumstances as these, would be to thank you," she said coolly. But in a more practical sense, I owe you nothing, inasmuch as my rescue was merely a side effect, as it were, of the more general rescue of everyone else who joined the Disney Family over the past decade. What say you?"

"I'd say I don't need _your_ thanks in any case, Maleficent!" Mickey spat.

"Charmed, I'm sure," the Wicked Fairy deadpanned. "Nonetheless, be justly warned that my freedom means the task ahead of you will become that much more difficult. I _will_ oppose you, Mickey Mouse, in ways you cannot even begin to imagine, if you persist in playing the hero."

"It's a risk I'm willing to take," he shot back. After a split second, he added, "You'd be surprised what I can imagine!"

"Come now," she said in her dreadfully reasonable tone of voice. "Won't you reconsider? 1965 is not such a bad year in which to remain. I've a feeling that even if you do assay to take the next ten-year step forward, you will find that you lack a certain…strength of character…to carry it through. Courage and sentimentality make poor neighbors, you know."

"What are you implying?" Mickey asked uneasily.

Maleficent swept in close, looking _toward_ him without exactly looking _at_ him. "What, just _tell_ you? I wouldn't wish to deny you the thrill of discovery. Until we meet again, then, Sorcerer's Apprentice." And with that, she was gone, twisting into a sliver of darkness in the air before vanishing altogether.

Mickey couldn't help feeling shaken. Maleficent never insinuated that a situation was any worse than it actually was, lest the victims of her psychological warfare grow to dismiss her hints as attempts to induce paranoia—which they were, but they were also tidbits of horrible truth. It was both cruel and astoundingly effective at causing suffering. Which was, of course, the whole point.

He especially didn't like the suggestion that he could be either brave or sentimental, but not both. He had made a notable _career_ out of being both, thank you very much.

"Mickey! Come down and see!"

It was Minnie calling him from the ground. She sounded happy, so she must not have spotted Maleficent.

"Be right there!" Mickey replied, forcing his voice to remain steady. In fact, he decided it would be better if he banished that whole encounter from his mind. Psychological warfare, to be successful, did require a certain amount of complicity on the part of the attackee.

Shrugging off the Wicked Fairy's words, he set about climbing down from the Castle parapet.

To Be Continued…

_A/N: I want to take this opportunity to give BIG THANKS to everyone who has read and reviewed so far! I had no idea there would be such a "market" for this story, which has already garnered more reviews than my other three fics combined! I've tried to be conscientious about replying individually to your reviews, but if I've missed you, let me know and I'll give you some attention! _

_And, just in case it needs saying, keep on reading_—_there's (more) good stuff coming!_


	8. Chapter 8

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 8: Launching Phase Two

Everyone occasionally forgets something which, if they had remembered it, would have saved them a lot of time and trouble. Mickey alighted on the drawbridge of Sleeping Beauty's Castle and immediately smacked his forehead.

"What is it, Mickey?" asked Minnie.

"I forgot that it's 1965 now. I just climbed down the front of the Castle when I could have taken the stairs inside!"

"Considering what you've been through today—this decade—I think you're entitled to a little absent-mindedness," Minnie giggled. "Now come get re-acquainted with some old friends!"

Central Plaza was abuzz with joy and laughter. There was a conditional quality to it—not so many had yet been rescued from Inpotentia, after all—but it was a welcome sound all the same. The characters that had been passing time in Fantasyland flooded out to greet the new arrivals, their amnesia apparently cured by the jump ahead in Disneyland's timeline.

Mickey watched the noisy reunion with satisfaction: the slobbering tongues and sniffing noses of Lady and the Tramp and their gang on one side, and the Dalmatians on the other; Cinderella's Fairy Godmother trying to embrace all three of Aurora's at the same time; Wart giggling and ducking under a mock attack from Peter Pan while Merlin danced a jig for the amusement of all and sundry. And of course, there was no shortage of hugs and thank-yous for him and the rest of the Fab Five.

All the same, Mickey couldn't help being anxious for those yet to be rescued. "We've still got a long way to go," he murmured to no one in particular, and suddenly all he wanted was to lie down and take a nap, maybe even call it an early evening. The day's breakneck pace was finally catching up with him—all at once, it seemed. Mickey hadn't felt such a bone-weariness since…gosh, since the Fifties (the real Fifties), when he was working fourteen-hour days in order to make all the public appearances demanded of him and still manage to crank out several short pictures every year…

And some people thought celebrities lived a life of ease.

Now, as then, rest was a luxury he just couldn't afford. The Disney Family was counting on him, and if any characters were forced to languish in Inpotentia_ one second longer_ than necessary, it wouldn't be because of any self-indulgence on his part!

"Oh, no, you don't," Minnie said abruptly, steering him away from a quartet of ebulliently grateful penguin waiters. "Mickey Mouse, you're going home and getting some sleep tonight, like the rest of us!"

There was a brief pause. "How did you do that?"

"I've been taking mind-reading courses at the community college," Minnie deadpanned. "Mickey, you crazy rodent…after seventy-five years together, don't you think I've got you figured out? You and your heroism—you'd keep plugging away at the quest until you dropped from sheer exhaustion. I recognize that look in your eye."

"I appreciate it, Minnie, I really do, but how _could_ I rest knowing that so many of our friends are still—"

He was cut off by Minnie's kiss, planted right on his lips as if no one were watching. For several amazing seconds, Mickey was in Heaven and all was right with the world. Even after she pulled away again, he felt like he might float away, buoyed upward the emotional helium that is romantic bliss. And he found himself completely unable to argue with her.

"On the other hand," he slurred happily, "whatever you want is okay too."

"I knew I'd make you see the error of your ways," she giggled. "Now let's get out of here before they go back to killing you with gratitude." She took his hand and began leading him beneath the Castle archway.

"Shouldn't we tell them we're leaving?" asked Mickey.

"Nope," was the nonchalant reply.

"But they'll all wonder—"

"Let 'em wonder. I want you all to myself for a little while, and I'll never get it if I don't grab it now."

Mickey jumped a little, startled, and turned to stare at his girlfriend as they continued to walk through Fantasyland. There was something unusually…_intense_, perhaps even fierce, in her tone and expression. "Minnie…?" he said quizzically.

"Mickey Mouse," she replied, her eyes smoldering under their half-closed lids, "have I ever told you that you are _hot stuff_ when you're being a hero?"

She leaned in to kiss him again, as night fell over the partially restored park.

* * *

There was nothing there until a sliver of darkness in the air twisted into the haggard form of Maleficent. Then there was a stone-walled room, sparsely furnished and dimly lit by greenish flames that crackled in iron braziers. Keeping her lair just outside of reality made its sanctity, and her privacy, absolutely secure, but it also meant that the lair itself had no reality apart from her subjective opinion that it did.

Maleficent staggered across the floor and slumped into a grim granite throne, panting heavily. Her sojourn as a lost idea had drained her, and the effort of shrugging off the fatigue and maintaining her poise in order to taunt that mouse had taken yet more out of her. The emptiness of Inpotentia seemed to cling to her, diminishing her, threatening to make her unreal even in a time and place where she definitely existed.

A shrill caw announced the arrival of her faithful familiar, the raven Diabolo. He circled the room once before alighting on the softly glowing orb atop Maleficent's staff. Wearily, she stroked his glossy feathers with two fingers.

"My pet," she sighed, "I confess—that was very nearly my undoing. Perhaps I should have swallowed my pride and asked for help from the other villains."

Diabolo narrowed his eyes and croaked a denial.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," said Maleficent. "Indeed, whom _could_ I have trusted? Surely no one whose own existence would have been threatened by the time shift would have agreed to help bring it about. And that leaves precious few of any competence."

She reviewed them silently. None of that early breed were really suited to her plans. The men, from fat Stromboli to bombastic Captain Hook, were all too petty in their wickedness and too unsubtle by far. Lady Tremaine had the right sort of style but was _much_ too small of ambition—the extent of her aspirations was to be _mother-in-law_ to a prince! The Queen of Hearts, of course, was nothing but a buffoon, too easily flattered to be reliably evil. That left the _other_ Queen, whose guile, magical talents, and capacity for pure spite would have made her an ideal ally…were it possible to drag her away from her precious looking-glass for twenty minutes.

"Do you know, my pet, save for you, I am truly alone in this world?" Maleficent mused. The notion didn't bother her as such, except on a practical level. If she had had a reliable accomplice, maybe she wouldn't now be sitting in her lair exhausted, feeling the nothingness of Inpotentia sucking at her being. She actively willed the feeling to pass.

It didn't pass, which was how she knew that it wasn't merely a feeling. Something—something that was nothing—really _was_ clinging to her. Diabolo suddenly sensed it as well; his feathers bristled and he made a low rasping noise.

Maleficent sat up a little straighter. "Reveal yourself," she hissed.

There emerged in the dim space of the chamber a vague shimmer, as of heated air, accompanied by a sound so faint as to be almost subconscious. To the extent that Maleficent could detect it, it seemed to consist of a horrible wailing that constantly, tunelessly changed pitch. It was like something trying desperately and hopelessly to be musical. It was really atrocious!

"How intriguing," Maleficent said through teeth gritted against the cacophony. "What manner of creature are you?"

The…thing…did nothing so organized as to be dignified with a word like _communication_, but a flood of impressions assailed Maleficent's mind. It was hunger, desperation, yearning, bitterness. It was a fragment of the essence of Inpotentia—a tiny idea that had never been realized. Once upon a time, someone had gotten a few bars of original music stuck in their head, just long enough for it to develop a persistence of self, and then forgotten all about it without having so much as hummed it aloud. Killed before it ever had a chance to be born, it had become a ghost of sorts—the wraith of a melody, fueled by its own despair and envy. To keep the meager semblance of existence that was all it had, it had been forced to hum _itself_, over and over, until it lost its own key and degenerated into the discordant yowl that insinuated itself into Maleficent's consciousness though her ears could scarcely perceive it.

It was utterly pathetic, and yet…

Maleficent smiled slowly, understanding why so many dark sorcerers chose to command the undead. How hideous to be a ghost, to be consumed by—nay, to be composed of—such raw, frantic, obsessive anguish! How lovely, then, to be the _master_ of a ghost, to manipulate that mindless, bleeding desperation to one's own ends!

The situation had just taken a promising turn.

"Can you understand my words?" she asked the creature.

Not only could it understand them, it seized them like a lifeline, for they represented the one slim saving grace for a lost idea: _acknowledgement_. It would hold Maleficent's attention any way it could.

"Then hear this, little lost thing: Serve me, obey me, and I will provide you the means to attain that which you crave. Do you agree?"

It did, it did! The non-music became, for just an instant, marginally less sour.

"A deal is struck," Maleficent said hastily, before the thing's attention could wander. "Now, the first service I require of you is information. Are there other things like you?"

The idea-ghost was stronger now, more coherent, its responses almost verbal. **_…yes…_**

"Can they be brought here?"

…_**yes…**_

Her eyes practically glowing with excitement, Maleficent leaned forward in her seat. Diabolo cawed as his perch shifted under his feet. "How many are there?" the Wicked Fairy asked.

The wisp was a moment in answering, as though taking time to find the right concept. When it did, it was just what Maleficent was hoping for.

…_**Countless…**_

* * *

Scarcely had the sun risen over Disneyland (an early rising, in the summer) before the word went out: Mickey says to gather in front of the Castle at eight o'clock. The extant members of the Disney Family, who had been more than a little confused at the abrupt disappearance of their leader the previous evening, were relieved to learn that things were getting back on track. So they gathered, without a peep of complaint at the earliness of the hour.

Mickey was already there when they first started arriving, but he didn't call a greeting or acknowledge the characters in any way. He was walking about Central Plaza, inspecting the small trees with an aura of pensive concentration that muzzled any urge to speak to him. The gathering grew in anxiety as it grew in size, each new arrival exposed to Mickey's odd behavior.

With no more than ten minutes until eight o'clock, Mickey suddenly blinked and straightened up, as though he had been sleepwalking. Looking sheepish, he hurried to the Castle drawbridge with a soft "Sorry about that, folks," and took up a position sitting on one of the guard walls. From his perch he scanned the area as though making an accounting of those present, still appearing deeply thoughtful. From time to time, someone achieved eye contact with him, at which he would smile and wave a little.

Jiminy Cricket was the first to pluck up the nerve to approach the uncharacteristically distant mouse. "It's almost eight now, Mickey," he said in a conversational tone.

"Yep," Mickey agreed.

"What happened last night?" Jiminy persisted. "You disappeared on all of us!"

Mickey made an impish grin. "You might say I was kidnapped…and there's the dirty rotten scoundrel who did it now! Perfect timing, Minnie!"

Jiminy was confused for only an instant. "Oh, I see," he said knowingly. "I won't pry."

"Mickey Mouse, are you spreading around the secrets of our love life?" Minnie playfully accused her boyfriend, arms akimbo as she strode up to him.

"Well, he asked," Mickey shrugged. "Anyway, it's time to get down to business!" He stood up on the guard wall and waved his arms, commanding attention. With all eyes upon him, he cleared his throat and began.

"First of all, let me apologize for vanishing so suddenly last night. Someone with more sense than me wanted to make sure I got enough rest. I hope all of you got enough rest too, because the rest of the Fab Five and I are moving ahead with the quest without any more delays and…and we might need help from any of you at any time." He inhaled deeply before continuing, before uttering the words that he had hoped would never be necessary. "As of this moment, consider yourselves on call. The Disney Family is officially in a state of crisis."

Stunned stares met his pronouncement. They had come up with what some characters jokingly referred to as a "doomsday contingency plan" in the early Nineties, but no one had really believed it would ever be needed. No matter what was going on in the world, or even in the Disney Corporation, it never seemed to interrupt the characters' normal way of life. Disneyland had proven itself a true haven…so perhaps it made sense that what had finally brought the Disney Family to the state of crisis that they had never anticipated, was a grave threat to the park itself.

"Is it battle stations, then, Mickey?" asked Prince Philip grimly.

"No, not yet," Mickey replied. "But it may come to that, and soon. Maleficent's back in action now, and she's already declared her intentions to oppose me—us."

"But of course," John Darling sniffed. "It's only to be expected from the likes of her."

"What does that rotten old banshee think she needs revenge for, anyway?" wondered Anita Radcliffe crossly, setting her arms akimbo.

At that point, the entire assemblage began trailing off into disparaging chatter about Maleficent. Mickey had to give a two-fingered whistle to get their attention again.

"C'mon, fellas, try to be a _little_ more disciplined!" he pleaded. "I know my usual way of running things is to, well, _not_ run them, but this is different!" Chastened, the characters quieted down.

"As I was saying," Mickey continued, "Maleficent is back, and her little jaunt in 'Inpotentia,' as she calls it, hasn't done a thing to sweeten her temper. She hasn't given up on trying to ruin us, and I don't know what she'll do now that we're thwarting her original plan. But I do know that we'll need solidarity and teamwork like never before if we want a chance of prevailing against her.

"Here's the plan so far: The five of us—" He indicated himself and the rest of his core team. "—will continue to look for the crowns. I know the search would go a lot faster if everyone pitched in, but it's safer to keep our efforts low-key until we know more about what Maleficent's up to. It would be too conspicuous to have all of us roaming around at once. But I do have specific jobs for a few of you."

He fixed Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather with his resolute gaze. "Ladies, you know Maleficent better than anyone else. I want you to patrol the park and keep your eyes open for any potential sign of her. In fact, if you find anything out of the ordinary—for 1965, that is—let me know about it as soon as possible."

He turned next to Merlin, who stood up a little straighter in response to the attention. "Merlin, your library of magical volumes is unmatched in the known world. I'm giving you the job of research. Look up everything you can about time manipulation magic and anything that might relate to that 'Inpotentia' place."

"I certainly shall, Mickey," said Merlin, "although I feel I must inform you that it's not a _place_, exactly, more of a—"

"I know, I know," Mickey said in a slightly harassed tone. "Find out what you can. I may give you more topics to research later on as well…so I'm authorizing you to recruit as many assistants as you need. I trust your judgment. Everyone else get that?"

There was a collective murmur of affirmation. Merlin, trying to inject a little humor into the businesslike atmosphere, half-turned and began eyeballing the crowd with a speculative, conniving expression.

"And there was one more thing…" Mickey said, tapping his chin in thought. "Oh, yeah! I need a crown!"

The puzzled silence that followed was broken by the Queen of Hearts. "What's wrong with the one I gave you?"

"Nothing!" Mickey assured her. "But I think I…used it up. It's a little awkward to explain."

He had discovered it much earlier that morning, when a nagging memory of something out of place prompted him to ascend the Castle parapet and inspect the turret where the Mouseketeer Crown had been restored. The thing out of place had been the Queen's crown, perched neatly on the narrow tip of the spire, mirroring in miniature the Mouseketeer Crown at the base. He had attempted to take it, only to feel, as soon as he touched it, the same sense of tension that had connected the two crowns back on Tom Sawyer's Island. The two were still linked somehow, and Mickey thought it imprudent to mess with them. This meant, of course, that he would need another physical crown to absorb the essence of the next symbolic crown. But he didn't think he could explain it to someone who hadn't been there when the Mouseketeer Crown was collected.

"You can use my crown," Aurora offered, holding out the delicate golden tiara that she wore.

"Oh, no, dear!" Fauna gasped, setting a restraining hand on Aurora's arm.

"It's very generous of you, dear," said Flora, "but we made that crown with our magic to be a symbol of your status as a princess. We cannot allow you to give it up so readily."

"Maleficent would be sure to use it against you somehow," Merryweather clarified.

Mickey had to agree with the three Good Fairies' judgment. They were all in the mess they were in because Maleficent had discovered how to attack symbolic crowns. (Of course, all crowns are symbolic to an extent, but when an object has magic imbued in its very make, it is more susceptible to magical manipulation.)

"What about the boy's crown?" wondered Archimedes the owl with a meaningful nod at scrawny young Wart. "At the moment, it's not symbolic of anything other than the fact that he's too small to wear it!"

"That's not a bad idea," said Merlin. "Provided Wart doesn't mind, of course. What do you say, lad?"

"Sure, I-I guess so," came the diffident, slightly apologetic reply. "But I don't have it right now. We'd have to go get it."

"Great!" said Mickey, hoping to sound encouraging. "You do that, and we'll meet you back here soon. As for the rest of you, well…watch out for yourselves and each other, and try not to let what's going on get under your skin too much. And stay well-rested. And don't be too shy to let me know about any ideas you might have." There was a long gap in the monologue. "I guess that's all."

Uncertainly, even reluctantly, the gathering began to break up. Too many emotions, in too short a span by the timepiece of memory, had left them all ragged around the edges, and it was only in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, within easy sight of the Mouseketeer Crown, that they could be sure the year 2005 was real, and not some group delusion.

"Gosh," Mickey mused. "I hope I didn't upset everyone too much."

"They'll be fine," Donald said dismissively. "Now let's get this show on the road!"

* * *

They returned to Frontierland, in the hope that they would be able to pick up the trail to the second crown in the place where they had found the first one. The idea had a certain mythological appeal, anyway. But they were quickly sidetracked. Their path to the loading dock for the rafts to Tom Sawyer's Island took them right alongside the construction barrier for the nascent New Orleans Square, behind which something was thumping, loudly. And there was a muffled scream.

"Uh-oh," Mickey observed. "Sounds like trouble. We should investigate."

"Shouldn't we call someone else to investigate and keep on with the quest?" suggested Minnie. The thumping continued, joined by a rattling. "We don't want to lose too much time."

"Calling someone else will also take time," Mickey reasoned. "We're here now."

He located an access door in the thin temporary wall and fiddled it open. The space beyond was a mélange of construction in progress, of unpainted superstructure and half-paved ground. The noise was coming from an aluminum shed, probably built from a kit and being used to store tools and spare parts. The door was held closed with a padlocked chain, against which something was straining to get out.

More thumps. More rattles. Another muted scream.

"What do you think it is?" Goofy whispered to Donald, who sweated profusely and gulped in fear. Pluto assayed forward carefully, his nose working like a piston, until another movement inside the shed made the padlock jump with a _bang_, spooking him.

"It sounds like…" Minnie whimpered, "…a monster!"

A shriek of rage emanated from inside the metal structure and the whatever-it-was redoubled its efforts to escape. Even Mickey was backing away apprehensively by this point, remembering that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and that even though proverbs are metaphorical, the reason metaphors are effective as literary devices is that everyone understands the truisms contained in their literal meanings.

The weak link turned out to be the padlock itself, which hadn't been latched properly. The chain went flying, the shed doors burst open, and the fiend lurched out into the daylight.

It was feathery. It was glittery, where it wasn't covered in dust and grime. It was wearing high heels and coughing.

"And just who are you calling a _monster_, Minnie Mouse?" Daisy Duck demanded, catching her balance.

To Be Continued… 


	9. Chapter 9

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 9: Adjuncts and Ramifications

Donald, flabbergasted, immediately shifted his gears into "concerned boyfriend" mode. "Daisy! Sweetheart! Are you okay? What happened? How did you wind up in that tool shed?" He rushed forward to take her by the hands and guide her to a nearby crate, where she sat down gratefully."

"I don't know," Daisy confessed. "One minute I was doing some last-minute touch-ups on my costume, the next minute everything went dark and I was…floating! It was like being in a sensory deprivation chamber!"

Minnie looked skeptical. "When have you ever been in a sensory deprivation chamber?"

"Once every two weeks," Daisy explained blithely. "It's part of my beauty treatment. You have to shut out all distractions so that your natural beauty can express itself without interference."

"I see…" Minnie said with pursed lips.

"So what happened after that?" Donald prompted.

"After what? Oh, right! So I was floating, but I was kind of…not floating, at the same time. I know it doesn't make sense, but that's what I remember. Maybe I was standing still, and it was everything else that was floating. I think I need to lie down for a while." She lifted the back of one hand to her forehead melodramatically, while Donald patted the other hand in sympathy.

"Donald," said Mickey, "take her home so she can get cleaned up and changed into something more…practical." Daisy's Mardi Gras costume, with its purple sequins and giant ostrich feathers, was completely unsuitable. For anything. "Explain the situation to her while you're at it. The rest of us will see about picking up the trail of the second crown."

"Second crown?" Daisy echoed blankly as Donald helped her to her feet and began steering her away from the construction site. "What crown? What in the world is going on? Why is New Orleans Square being remodeled? Just how long was I stuck in that shed?"

"It's a long story, toots," Donald sighed. Then the pair was lost to sight.

"How _do_ you suppose Daisy wound up in there?" Goofy wondered as the four of them exited the enclosure and continued on toward the raft dock.

"I have a hunch," said Mickey, "but I'm waiting to get more of her story before I jump to any conclusions."

One raft, inelegantly labeled "Becky Thatcher" in off-white paint, sat moored at the dock, its motor running idle, with two more ("Tom Sawyer" and "Injun Joe") secured nearby. The oddness of it struck Mickey: with no guests present to be entertained, and no Cast Members to entertain them, Disneyland was nonetheless perfectly operational. The raft was ready to move; he had only to unhook the mooring rope and release the throttle to take them across the Rivers of America.

Then came the tricky matter of steering. Neither track-bound like the big ships nor as maneuverable as the hand-paddled canoes, the rafts could be daunting for the inexperienced to control. Too much speed would cause water to build up in front of the leading edge of the platform, splashing the passengers—too little increased the risk of being overtaken by the _Mark Twain_ or _Columbia_ on their rigid circuit. And since only one side of the craft was capable of docking, each trip necessitated a 180-degree spin that could, if the operator wasn't careful, take the raft way off course. Fortunately, they were the only ones on the river, giving Mickey the leisure to take it slow and careful.

They realized almost immediately after arriving at Tom Sawyer's Island that they wouldn't be able to find any clues. It wasn't the same island that it had been in 1955; development into an elaborate playground had involved a wholesale alteration of its landscape. Trees and boulders had been relocated or removed altogether, rope bridges and artificial caves and log cabins and forts had been built. The little clearing where the Mouseketeer Crown had lain was, in a sense, not even there anymore.

Having determined that the lead was a dead end, the four of them returned to the "mainland."

"So now what?" asked Minnie.

"Back to Central Plaza," Mickey said after half a moment's consideration. "Merlin and Wart should be there with Wart's crown by now, and we can't charge ahead without Donald and Daisy anyway."

So they returned to the spot that they were increasingly beginning to think of as home base for the adventure. Merlin was indeed there to hand over the ornate crown of England's kingship with an exaggerated air of ceremony that bordered on parody. (He seemed in some ways not to be taking the state of affairs quite seriously enough…but then again, this was _Merlin_, behind whose puckish sense of humor nestled one of the sharpest and wisest minds in the entire Disney Family. If he seemed to be taking a crisis lightly, it was assuredly only a seeming.) The aged wizard remarked casually upon Daisy's sudden reappearance and wished them all luck in their endeavor before retreating into Fantasyland to carry out his assigned task of research.

At length, Donald and Daisy returned, she freshly turned out in a lavender blouse and matching ribbon for her perky feather-do. She looked slightly troubled, which in Daisy Duck usually translated into an adamant, aggressive determination to fix whatever was troubling her, often with extreme prejudice.

"Donald tells me it's 1965," she said petulantly. "I don't care what anyone says; I am _not_ wearing go-go boots again."

"Did you find anything?" asked Donald.

"No," Mickey sighed. "It looks like we may have to send Minnie up the Castle again."

"I'll do it," Minnie growled, "but I won't like it."

"Maybe it won't be necessary," Daisy said reassuringly. "I only have bits and pieces of the story so far, and you guys don't have my whole story either. Maybe we can figure something out if we put the two together."

"That's a great idea!" Mickey crowed, perking up considerably. "You go first, Daisy—and don't leave anything out!"

"Right," Daisy agreed, clearing her throat. "Like I said before, I wanted to do a last-minute 'theme check' on my costume, so I went to New Orleans Square to pick up a few more beads and feathers. While I was there, suddenly it was like someone threw a switch and shut off the world. I couldn't see a thing, or hear anything except my own voice! And I was all alone…" She paused for a moment to smooth her ruffled composure. "Anyway, I don't know how long I was stuck like that. My whole sense of time was screwed up. When the world came back, I was locked in that tool shed. I spent the entire night in there!"

"Gosh, that sounds awful!" Mickey sympathized. "You're okay now, though, right? No lingering side effects of the, uh, sensory deprivation chamber?"

"No—why, should there be? Do you know what happened to me?"

"I think so. I'm pretty sure you took a trip to Inpotentia." And while Daisy listened in rapt, disturbed fascination, Mickey explained—in detail—what had happened to Disneyland and the Disney Family. He told her what they had learned from Maleficent of Inpotentia, the condition of only possibly existing. He gave her a rundown of the quest, including where they currently stood.

"Something doesn't make sense," said Daisy. "I've been around since before 1955. Why did I get sent to…what did you say it was called?"

"Inpotentia," Minnie filled in.

"Inpotentia, right, thanks. Why did I wind up there?"

"Because New Orleans Square _wasn't_ around in 1955, is my guess," said Mickey. "It was the area that got…uncreated; you just went along for the ride."

"Hey, ya know what?" Goofy broke in. "We just learned a bunch o' stuff worth knowin'!" He began counting off on his long fingers. "One: It's not just characters that got sent to Inpotentia, but lands and attractions and everything about Disneyland that hasn't been built yet. Two: A person can end up there if the place they're standin' in does. Uh…three: A person who goes there that way won't be affected the same way as a person who goes there because time got backed up to before _they_ existed yet. And three: the place might not have to come back all the way for the person to come back!"

"You mean four," said Donald.

"I do?" Goofy asked blankly. "What'd I say?"

"You said 'three' twice," the duck explained. "The second 'three' should have been 'four.'"

"Well, shucks, Donald, you just made me lose count." Donald rolled his eyes. "But as I was sayin'," Goofy continued, "maybe it's a good thing Daisy got stuck for a little while! Otherwise, we wouldn't have found out all that important stuff!"

"You wouldn't be saying that if it had happened to you," Daisy sniffed.

"And it wouldn't have happened to _you_ if you'd been on time to the Happiest Homecoming," Mickey pointed out wryly. "But that's not important. Goofy, what did you mean about people being affected? Everyone who came back is okay, right?"

"More or less," said Donald soberly. "After Minnie dragged you off last night, we got to talking with the people who'd been trapped there."

"Uh-huh," Goofy agreed. "It sounds pretty awful, not really existin'! They said they had to keep remindin' themselves who they were, every second, or they'd feel like they were completely disappearin'!"

"But that didn't happen to Daisy," Donald finished, pulling his girlfriend close.

"It's easier being a visitor than an inmate, I guess," she said philosophically.

"There's no time to lose, then!" said Mickey. "Well, Daisy? Any ideas where we should start looking?"

"Hmm," she said thoughtfully. "What about Tomorrowland?"

"How do you figure?"

"You found the first crown—the one with the Mouseketeer hats on it—on Tom Sawyer's Island, right? Don't you remember Walt's original plans for Tom Sawyer's Island? What he wanted headquartered there?"

Gradually it dawned on them. "Why…the Mickey Mouse Club!" Minnie exclaimed.

"Exactly," said Daisy. "And the design of the crown representing the second decade uses the Moonliner as its basic motif. Ergo, it should be somewhere in Tomorrowland!"

"Wow, Daisy!" Mickey opined. "That's…that's brilliant!"

"I know!" she piped. "Besides being great for a girl's looks, sensory deprivation helps with mental focus too!"

* * *

There was no end to them, and the servitude of all was hers for the asking. They would do _anything_ just to be noticed, and did not have the wit to draw any distinction between true acknowledgement and the empty promise of it.

They lacked substance entirely; even the word _illusion_ credited them with more reality than they possessed. The only place they found a semblance of existence was in the mind of someone real, and even there they were weak, able to do no more than provide fleeting impressions of what they might have been.

But they were getting stronger. Maleficent was seeing to that, submitting briefly to the gross unpleasantness of _experiencing_ them in all their misbegotten variety. She permitted each one a brief foray across her consciousness, that it might draw enough sustenance to have a sense of purpose. It was an exercise in masochism. They represented all the senses, every possible avenue of creativity, so that no mode of her perception was left unsoiled as she ushered them, the rejected orphans of the human imagination, onto the threshold of the existent world. She didn't much mind. Maleficent had long ago accepted that the road to power was a toll highway. And as personal sacrifices went, these were superficial—aesthetic annoyances, really.

Her lair was thronged with them: tunes never quite composed, words almost coined, recipes that just missed being attempted, graphic designs never sketched, plans never formalized…all manner of ideas, forgotten by their creators but not by themselves. A casual observer would have noticed nothing. They were invisible, intangible, inaudible, _undetectable_, until they touched the mind and revealed the degradation that they had become. Yet here and there were hints—a flicker in the shadow of green torchlight, the suggestion of a whispered voice riding a chilly draft—indicating that _something_ was coalescing out of the nothingness of them.

Oh, yes, they were getting stronger. Soon they would be strong enough. Soon, Maleficent would unleash them—the Dispirations—on the Magic Kingdom to do her bidding.

The Wicked Fairy added her own malevolent laughter to the dissonance her new minions were creating in her head.

* * *

If seeing the old Fantasyland again had produced a curious mix of nostalgia and disorientation, entering the Tomorrowland of 1965 was almost entirely unsettling. Of all the lands, Tomorrowland had required the most updates and revamps over the years to keep pace with a continuously evolving vision of the future. While Fantasyland's single remodel had amounted to an enhancement of its timeless theme, its progressive neighbor had undergone several extensive transformations over the years, each time emerging with a different focus. While it had acquired a few permanent landmarks, too good to give up—Carousel Theater, the overhead trackway originally built for the PeopleMover, the ridged cone of Space Mountain with its graceful alien spires—none of those had been built by 1965.

Thus, the Tomorrowland into which the Sensational Six ventured was one that had long since stopped being familiar to them in any way. In many ways, it had hardly changed since Opening Day, especially in the vicinity of the land's entrance. Instead of giant shining mockups of silvery circuit board, the gates were adorned with the Clock of the World and a double column of flagpoles flying the colors of many nations. The space beyond looked—to eyes accustomed to the 21st Century—almost unnaturally open, like real estate going to waste.

This was the very end of the era of corporate-sponsored walkthrough attractions, of Monsanto and Kaiser Aluminum and Dutch Boy. Most of those exhibits, which had been installed as stopgaps when Tomorrowland's original construction ran over-budget on both time and money, had already closed by 1965, but nothing memorable had yet arisen to replace them.

"Oh, Donald, you weren't kidding!" Daisy exclaimed. "I'd forgotten how much this place had changed in the last forty years! What are we going to do?"

"We're going to bring it back up to the present, ten years at a time," Mickey replied. "So, Daisy, you seem to be on a roll today—where should we start looking for the Rocket Crown?"

"I was going to suggest the Moonliner, but it's obviously not there," said Daisy, pointing ahead. With no tall structures in the intervening space, the tall, proud rocket was clearly visible in its entirety, without a hint of gold interrupting its bold red and white color scheme.

"Well, it shouldn't be too hard to spot, wherever it is," said Minnie. "It's gold, and almost everything here is white and silver."

They reached the broad, mostly uncluttered area at the end of the entry promenade and spread out slightly, each one scanning their line of sight for the telltale flash of gold and gems. After several fruitless minutes of this, Mickey spoke up.

"Fellas, we need a better plan than this. There's a lot of ground to cover here, and buildings to search, and we're all just glancing around and hoping the crown pops into view!"

"It's too bad this isn't _really_ the future," Goofy said glumly, "or we'd have nifty inventions to help us look. Like…uh…"

"Like little robot servants?" Daisy suggested, holding her hand parallel to the ground to suggest something about thirty inches tall.

"Yeah!" Goofy said, brightening. "Or an automatic radar crown detector!"

"Or X-ray specs!" Donald chimed in, encircling his eyes with his fingers. All three of them broke into laughter for a moment. Then Donald straightened up with an excited expression. "I've got a great idea! Follow me!"

He led them at a brisk walk back up the entry promenade, all the way to Tomorrowland's entrance, where he turned a sharp left and approached the entrance to the southern building complex. Within the hexagon formed by a stick-and-ball model of a carbon ring, glowing neon tubing over the doorway spelled out the words "Hall of Chemistry."

"What's here?" asked Minnie. She made a face. "Monsanto didn't actually _invent_ X-ray specs, did they?"

"No, I think we'd remember something like that," Daisy said dryly.

As was typical of the early sponsored attractions, the interior exhibits were filled with glowing praise for the life-improving miracles of modern chemistry, amounting to little more than the Monsanto Corporation patting itself on the back. Donald swept past all this to a "Cast Members Only" door near the back. Beyond this was a break area, a small administrative office, and a short hallway terminating in another ordinary door. This one, however, was plastered with large signs reading "DO NOT ENTER" in about twelve languages (except for the Chinese, which actually translated as "Please leave the egg rolls on the small table to the right. The money is inside an envelope taped to the back of this sign. Keep the change. Thank you.") and one small sign reading "The Professor is IN."

Donald ignored all the brusque commands and marched right through the door. It opened onto a downward-trending metal stairway, at the bottom of which was yet another door. The signs on this one bore messages along the lines of "TOP-SECRET: UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL STRICTLY FORBIDDEN" and "THIS PROBABLY MEANS YOU." These, too, Donald disregarded.

"Should we really be down here?" Goofy wondered nervously. "Those signs look awful serious!"

"Not to worry, Goofy, old pal," Donald replied confidently. "I'm _authorized_ personnel."

The group continued down a long, dimly lit hallway to a final door ("THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO TURN BACK"), which Donald slowly pushed open with an air of supreme caution, as though expecting the unexpected. When nothing happened, he waved them all through while calling a cheery "Hello?" to the presumed occupant of wherever they had arrived at.

"LOOK OUT!" barked a frantic voice. Before the six of them could react, the attack came. There was a loud hiss—several loud hisses in fact, from all sides—and they found themselves engulfed in a noxious opacity. A choking chemical mist surrounded them, blotting out all light and setting them coughing violently.

"Oh, goodness!" cried the voice from before. "Let me help you out a little over there."

There was a whining, whirring sound, and the foul cloud dispersed before a draft of fresh air driven by a high-powered electric fan, allowing the Sensational Six to catch their collective breath…and revealing the smiling face of their host, Professor Ludwig von Drake. Donald had taken them to his Viennese uncle's semi-secret lab. (Mickey had always known it existed, but never exactly where it was located.)

"Well, look at you kids!" von Drake emoted gleefully. "That's very fetching! Oh, well, it needed a test run anyway."

Minnie and Daisy simultaneously caught sight of each other, pointed, and shrieked. Then they stared at their own pointing hands and shrieked again. Then they pointed at the guys and shrieked some more. Then the guys joined in. Even Pluto was aghast at the sight of himself.

All six of them had been dyed a mélange of outrageously bright colors, bordering on the psychedelic. (Well, it _was_ the Sixties.) The hissing sound had been several aerosol canisters, the pernicious miasma a fog of lurid spray paint.

"What's the big idea, Uncle Ludwig?" Donald demanded furiously. "Are you trying to _kill_ us?"

"Of course not!" von Drake said merrily. "That's just my experimental automated laboratory security system. It doesn't hurt the intruders or restrain them, but it sure makes them conspicuous when they tryin' to run away! I'm thinking of calling it 'Spectro-Protectro;' what do you think?"

"I think I need another shower!" Daisy wailed.

"Yeah, sorry about that. Here, this should do the trick." He pressed a button on a remote control unit the size of an unabridged dictionary, and several pressure hoses whipped down from the ceiling to douse them in water. Another button brought the fan into play again, blasting them with hurricane-force winds, so that all six of them were soon both clean and dry, if rather shell-shocked and woolly with static electricity.

"Uh…thanks," said Daisy, trying to put her feathers back in order without the aid of a beauty salon.

"Pretty slick, huh?" the Professor beamed. "It's also useful for when an experiment goes BOOM! and all of a sudden there's a great big mess all over everywhere."

Mickey's opinion was that was exactly what had just happened, but he didn't say so.

"So, Donald, favorite nephew of mine," von Drake continued. "What's the occasion for this visit with all your little friends?"

"You mean you don't know?" Mickey blurted, taken aback.

"Is it somebody's birthday?"

"He wasn't even at the Castle when it happened," said Minnie. "He's probably suffering from the same amnesia that struck everyone in Fantasyland."

"Business as usual," Mickey sighed. "Professor von Drake, this might shock you, but even as we speak, Disneyland is under attack!"

Von Drake narrowed his eyes. "What kind of attack?" he said seriously.

"The kind of attack," Mickey replied, "that rewinds time and traps the members of the Disney Family in a place where they don't even exist!"

The elderly duck looked pensive. "You know something, Mickey? That actually might explain…well, I better just show you what it actually might explain. Come on over this way."

He escorted them further into the lab, which was about the dimensions of a high school gymnasium but much more densely populated with…stuff. Bookcases and cupboards and stainless steel counters doubled as partitions, dividing the lab into a mazelike conglomeration of specialized workspaces. Most of what was going on was scientific in nature, even if the purpose of it wasn't readily discernible—bubbling test tubes, buzzing Jacob's ladders, a watermelon bristling with electrodes. One area seemed to have been converted into a makeshift lecture hall, with about twenty chairs, a slide projector, and a reversible chalkboard on which were marked the words "INSIDE-OUT EARTH HYPOTHESIS" and a sketch of a globe with the outlines of the continents drawn backwards. In another corner, a large cage contained several albino rats that appeared to be performing _The Pirates of Penzance_. Periodically, von Drake would stop to peer at something or other and make a few notes on a clipboard before continuing. Every spare surface was heaped with loose papers and books on every conceivable subject, supporting the Professor's self-acclaimed status as The World's Foremost Expert on Everything.

Their destination turned out to be a large wall-mounted (or in this case, back-of-shelving-unit-mounted) electronic display. It looked like a map or a building blueprint, neat white lines on a cobalt background. A massive control console, covered with flickering lights and rows of switches and bearing at least one standard computer keyboard, spread out at the screen's base. The whole thing looked like it belonged at NASA.

"This," von Drake said grandly, gesticulating with an educator's pointer, "is the latest development in top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art, man-of-the-hour space-time-matter-energy scanning surveillance analysis technology: the Cosmoscope 5000!"

"Hey, look, it's a map o' Tomorrowland!" Goofy observed. Sure enough, the pale outlines in the diagram were those of the buildings and other structures in the area of Disneyland that all of them were currently occupying. It was obvious once you knew what you were looking at.

Von Drake made an avuncular chuckle. "You sure hit it on the nose! Maybe you not as dumb as they say! I been using the Cosmoscope 5000 to keep tabs on stuff that goes on the park when I'm not looking. And today I find _this_ little piccadilly!" He stabbed with the pointer at a slowly blinking yellow dot in the Submarine Lagoon. With every flash, an expanding circle of light spread over the map.

"What is it?" asked Mickey.

"A temporal anomaly," von Drake explained, scrunching up his face the way he often did when lecturing. "Right in this spot, time is going all screwy for some reason."

The Sensational Six traded meaningful glances. "I think we might have a lead on that," Mickey said.

"But that's nothin'!" the Professor went on. "The really puzzling thing is over here." He turned to the console and began punching buttons. The map display scrolled to the right, revealing the eastern edge of the public part of Disneyland, a few small office bungalows, the outer berm, and then…nothing. The crisp details of the map, including the gridlines, faded out into a pixellated haze.

"It's not supposed to do that," said von Drake. "We should be seein' Harbor Boulevard here, not this mishmash. And now look at this!" He tapped more buttons and flicked a few switches, and the image on the monitor changed to a kaleidoscopic swirl of color, like a screensaver based on the Mandelbrot set but lacking its complex order. There was no rhyme or reason to it, just endlessly shifting hues.

"And what's this, the best of Spectro-Protectro?" Daisy asked sarcastically. She was still a little bitter about having been so unceremoniously plastered with paint.

"_This_," von Drake announced dramatically, "is a live video feed coming from the very edge of the park property. This is what it looks like outside the park right at this moment. Combined with the failure of the Cosmoscope 5000 map and what Mickey just told me about us bein' under attack, it can only mean one thing." He leaned forward, planting his palms on a conveniently situated table, and eyeballed them sternly. "Disneyland is disconnecting from reality!"

To Be Continued…

_A/N: Thanks to all my readers for your patience while I got this chapter finished. It actually ran a little longer than I had expected because of a bit of self-indulgence on my part—Ludwig von Drake is one of my favorite lesser-known Disney characters and I couldn't live with myself if I shortchanged him. Another reason for the delay is the setting: photos and maps (for reference) of Tomorrowland prior to the 1967 remodeling are almost impossible to come by, even in this age of Google._

_Minnie comes across a little catty at points; I think it's because she's miffed at Daisy for turning up all of a sudden and pulling the prima donna act. She'll be better next chapter, I promise._

_—Karalora_


	10. Chapter 10

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 10: Into the Depths

"Let's go this way now."

"We've already been that way."

"Well, what about over here?"

"Oh, no, dear, that was the _first_ area we checked. Let's try across the way."

"This is no way to conduct a patrol. We're just going in circles!"

"Maybe we should get a map and mark it with chalk as we go. Do you think that would help?"

"_Ssh!_ Not so loud, dear—Maleficent might be listening!"

The three Good Fairies were taking their assignment from Mickey very seriously, which was to say they were being flustered and inefficient about it. When facing the forces of evil head-on, they were paragons of competence and teamwork; in less dire circumstances, they tended to be doddering and distractible and peevish with each other. At the moment, they were ambling rather aimlessly through Fantasyland, covering the same ground several times in their wanderings and blithering about it to each other continuously, at no small cost to their alertness.

In fact, when the tiny rent opened in the world and the Dispiration slipped through, they missed it entirely.

Of all the weak, pathetic idea-ghosts that Maleficent had brought forth from Inpotentia, it was among the weakest and most pathetic, so bereft of form that its only appearance, even after being bolstered by the Wicked Fairy, was of a semi-transparent blur floating in the air. Even if anyone _had_ seen it, they could easily have mistaken it for a small spot of heat-shimmer hovering just over the pavement of Fantasyland as it warmed in the morning sunlight.

Maleficent had released it into the park as a test, supposing that even unforeseen consequences would be of no concern when the subject was as feeble as this.

The Dispiration huddled in the Fantasyland courtyard, reflexively acclimating itself to its new surroundings as an amoeba adapts to changes in the temperature of its pond. It reached out with what passed for its awareness…and discovered that it had landed in a paradise of sorts.

The construction of Disneyland had been a minor miracle in itself. It had taken exactly a year—an impossible feat by any reasonable standard given the size, the complexity, and the novelty of the place. Yet Walt Disney had made it happen, with a determination no less powerful and relentless than the creativity that led to him envisioning the park in the first place. No obstacle could thwart his will to overcome it, no setback was impervious to his imaginative genius. And his employees, instead of resenting him for the insane demands he made on their time and energy, were inspired by his vision and infected by his enthusiasm. They rose to meet every challenge, and thus the impossible was achieved. Passion and ingenuity and sheer dogged tenacity filled in where feasibility fell short, with the result that Disneyland had the raw stuff of dreams baked into its very bricks.

And the Dispiration, like all its kindred, was a dream starved of substance.

It found itself surrounded by the very thing it had yearned for since its halfway inception, and it wasted no time in feeding, absorbing enough sustenance to create for itself an identity of sorts, and a definite form. Because it was in Fantasyland, the essence of imagination that it took in was channeled along the lines of the fantastic—of fable and fairy tale and mythology. The shape it gathered itself into was sooty and imp-like, with a bestial head and wiry tail; it moved on two legs or four with equal ease. It looked like something a beautiful but vain and wicked Queen might have manifested during her early experiments with sorcery, or like an inhabitant of one of the darker forests in Wonderland. The black god Chernobog might have summoned it for an evening of sadistic revelry.

It stretched its new body and sniffed the morning breeze, feeling the exhilaration of _existence_. It had only the rudiments of sentience, but it could remember, and learn, and form attachments. It remembered the horned woman who had sent it to this cornucopia of a place. It realized that she had made good on her promise to supply it with the reality that it craved. It discovered itself in possession of a new, captivating emotion:

_Loyalty!_

The Dispiration scuttled into the shade of a building, where instinct told it that it would be less detectable to potential enemies, and began searching for a way to serve the one it was beginning to view as "mistress."

* * *

They were skeptical of Professor von Drake's grim pronouncement at first—not because they doubted whether Maleficent's spell could have caused something as drastic as Disneyland's disconnection from reality, but because they didn't see why the swirl of colors on the Cosmoscope 5000 monitor should be taken as diagnostic. As Minnie put it: "Don't try to convince a bunch of film stars that the camera doesn't lie."

They hastily exited the lab in order to confirm or disprove von Drake's theory with their own eyes. And at first, it indeed seemed to be a false alarm. The clear sky of a Southern California summer's day spread above them as they stood in the Tomorrowland entrance promenade, with no hint of any color other than innocent cerulean blue. But as Mickey tracked the bright expanse from its zenith down toward the horizon, he shifted his focus for a split second, and in that split second he _saw_ it.

His gasp must have been very loud, because Minnie said "What? What's wrong?"

"I think…" Mickey said vaguely, staring firmly at the eastern sky, _daring_ it to transform again. What had happened to make it change the first time? Had he only imagined it? He squinted, trying to see past his assumptions about what the sky looked like.

As if he were emerging from a fog bank—or entering one—Mickey saw the flat blue of the daylit sky dissolve into the multicolored turbulence he remembered from the lab. It covered the entire bowl of the heavens, filling his field of view. Looking at it was like staring into the heart of a fire opal the size of a planet. It was so chaotic and alien, it should have been terrifying…especially in light of what it signified. But it was also beautiful in its way, with an undercurrent of familiarity. Mickey found it quite easy, actually, to soothe the pounding of his heart.

"Oh, wow," he said with surprising calmness. He lowered his gaze to meet the eyes of his companions, noticing with interest that the blue sky returned to his peripheral vision as he did so. He started to piece together how to alternate his perspective to _choose_ which version of the sky he saw.

"Professor von Drake was right," he said. "What we saw on his screen…it's real. And I think I can show you how to see it."

"Please do," Donald told him flatly. "I'm not having any luck at all."

Mickey pointed east, to the Rocket to the Moon attraction building and the tall spire of the Moonliner. Beyond them could barely be glimpsed snatches of the earthen berm that surrounded the park, isolating it visually from the outside world. Now it seemed that separation was becoming more than mere psychology. "Start looking there, at the Moonliner. Then look past it, where you can see a little bit of the berm. Have you all got it?" There was a chorus of yeses. "Okay, now try looking past the berm. There's nothing there to see, but pretend there is. Focus on the space outside the park. If I'm right—"

"Oh my word!" Minnie exclaimed. "It's just like it was on the monitor down in the lab!"

One by one, they all achieved the right depth of perspective…and varying degrees of panic. Mickey quickly told them to shift focus back inside the park, and they settled down.

"What d'ya think it means?" Goofy fretted.

"I already told you what it means. Kids these days, they never listen," said Ludwig von Drake, walking up unexpectedly behind them. "It means we gotta do something about it, that's what it means!"

"We _are_ doing something about it," Mickey informed him. "We've _been_ doing something about it, in fact."

"What exactly is going on, anyway? Who's attacking us? Is it that crazy Cruella De Vil? Because I already told her I'm not gonna be a judge at her next fashion show."

Mickey made a small noise of dismissal in his throat. "If only it _were_ her! Actually, it's Maleficent. She's trying to ruin the park through magical time manipulation—you may not believe this, but it's _supposed_ to be the year 2005. You don't remember it because…well, it's complicated. If you go stand in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle and count the turrets, you'll understand."

"So, you saying I should do that then?" asked von Drake.

"Actually…yeah! Go do that, and then go back to your lab and research temporal anomalies. And parallel dimensions. Anything that has to do with what you showed us on the Cosmoscope. In the meantime, we'll be investigating that suspicious spot in the Submarine Lagoon."

"You can count on me, kiddo! Good luck in the water over there!" With that, von Drake parted company with them, moving at an ambling pace toward Central Plaza while whistling "The Green With Envy Blues."

"Well, let's get on over to the subs," said Mickey. "I wasn't just saying that to get rid of him, you know!"

The Submarine Lagoon lay close to the border between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland…which was perhaps why the Submarine Voyage attraction flirted with the trappings of fantasy—mermaids, a sea serpent, the lost continent of Atlantis—even as it proclaimed the triumph of modern technology that allowed people to visit the Arctic ice sheet from underneath.

The submarines were lined up at the loading dock: eight vessels, each some forty feet long and painted a forbidding battleship gray. Mickey realized that he had been subconsciously expecting the bright yellow paint job, suggestive of exploratory ventures rather than military ones, that had been applied in the Eighties. He waved the rest of the Sensational Six along the dock but stopped them just before they boarded the sub at the front of the line, the _Sea Wolf_.

"Remember what happened at the Rivers of America?" he said. "Something tells me we should be prepared to have it happen here too. Fortunately, this time we'll be in an armored boat." He tapped the hull of the submarine with his foot, letting the resultant tinny _thunk_ make his point. "_Un_fortunately, that won't help us much if we don't know how to operate a _real_ submarine. Donald, I believe this is where your Navy experience will come in handy. They ever teach you to drive one of these things?"

Donald blinked, missing a beat. "Of course!" he said a little too perkily. "It'll be a piece of cake!" He gulped nervously.

Mickey—and everyone else—missed the duck's apprehension altogether. "Great! I'll let you take the helm. Goofy, you man the periscope, and Daisy, you're in charge of sonar. Pluto can be our mascot!"

"A_hem_!" Minnie said coyly. "Aren't you forgetting someone, Mickey?"

"Don't be silly, Minnie! I could never forget my best girl! You and I will be watching out the portholes together for any sign of the Rocket Crown. It was your sharp eyes that found the Mouseketeer Crown for us, after all."

"I hoped you had something like that in mind," she said warmly. "But let's make sure we keep our eyes on the water, and not on each other!"

"You got that right," Mickey agreed. "Well, this is it, gang! All aboard!"

One by one, they climbed into the submarine. Mickey closed the hatch after them, and with a hiss of fine bubbles, they were on their way around the Lagoon.

And in the shadowy recesses of a nearby juniper hedge, a sooty, imp-like creature watched them go.

* * *

"Well, well, what have we here?" Maleficent said smoothly, her eyes locked on the orb that topped her staff. "It seems our little test run has succeeded beyond all expectations. This _is_ encouraging."

Diabolo cawed a query, shifting nervously on his perch. He didn't like the Dispirations crowding his home, and was glad to hear that his mistress considered the test successful—it meant she would be sending them away.

"It's found them," she explained. "The mouse and his little friends. They've foolishly gone and put themselves in quite a vulnerable position." She had been using the orb to keep an eye on the pioneering Dispiration and, when it had stopped creeping about and stared fixedly, had naturally become curious about what had seized its undivided attention. That it was Mickey Mouse and his comrades boarding a submarine and taking it on its trackbound journey was just the icing on the cake.

It took only a small exertion of her power to call the creature back to her lair. It fought at first, none too eager to leave the luxuriant atmosphere of nourishing wonder that was Disneyland, but it wasn't a patch on her. She dragged it through the barrier between her headquarters and the physical world and watched with cool interest as it shivered on the stone floor in the company of its less fully realized kin.

"Do not attempt to defy me again," she muttered under her breath, not knowing and little caring if it could actually hear her…or understand. She wondered—what would become of it, now that she had removed it from the park? Would it revert to being a formless spot of nothing? Or had it made that body truly its own?

She hadn't even considered a third possibility. Not only did it retain its shape, but the other Dispirations nearby seemed to grow stronger from the proximity, as if it actually possessed _more_ reality than it needed and was giving it off like body heat, warming its brethren. In any case, it was clear that the environment of the park was a fuel of sorts to her new servants. The very act of sending them to do her bidding would seem to them to be the fulfillment of her side of the bargain. It was a perfect situation.

Given that, she saw no reason to hold them back any longer. She held out a thin, pale hand to the corporeal Dispiration and let it clamber up onto her forearm, where it clung like a ferret. The others squirmed in its sudden absence, craving its solidity.

"The ones you saw just before I summoned you back here," Maleficent addressed the creature, "are my enemies." It made a thin hiss, the first sound it had produced in its short existence: it understood well the concept of enemies! "Yes, indeed. Now listen well. I appoint you the leader of your kind. You will teach them how to use the existence they will gain shortly, when I send all of you out into the world. And you will show them who the enemies are, so that all of you together may do what you can to _destroy_ them."

The new chief of the Dispirations wriggled happily at the thought of a task whereby it could please its Mistress. Again, Maleficent opened a gateway into Disneyland, letting a smile of triumph spread on her face as the horde poured through.

* * *

It was awkward, at first, inside the submarine—Mickey's specialized assignments were all but useless when applied to what was, after all, a simple ride vehicle rather than a functional underwater transport. The only one who had much of anything to do was Donald, and even his responsibilities were limited to the uncomplicated controls of the sub. With the track making any sort of steering device patently unnecessary, the only possible variables were the vehicle's speed (moving or stopped) and the pre-recorded narration (playing or turned off). If he wanted to get really wild, he could supply his own narration via the cabin address speakers.

Everyone else, of course, had to take a seat in the cabin and peer out the portholes with Mickey and Minnie. It was hardly an onerous duty—conditions inside the submarine were somewhat cramped, but it was easy enough to focus on the aquatic panorama outside, which looked all the roomier for the way it faded into blue-tinted haziness with distance. The submarine coasted smoothly around the sunlit Lagoon and its fair imitation of a tropical coral grove replete with dazzlingly colored fishes, snails in rococo shells, and octopi lazily waving suckered tentacles.

"I missed this ride," Minnie mumbled, as if to herself. The Submarine Voyage had closed in 1998, a victim of grand retooling plans that hadn't quite come together. (Fortunately, newer, sounder plans had eventually been made.)

The speakers crackled. "This is your captain speaking," Donald said playfully, barely intelligible between his speech impediment and the static of the sound system. "We are now traveling through liquid space on a voyage to the North Pole!" He exploded in laughter.

"Good grief," said Daisy. "He sounds like he's been waiting his whole life to say that."

"He's got nothing better to do," Mickey shrugged. "Get ready, everyone, we're about to 'dive.'"

The cruise around the reef was only the first part of the ride, after which the sub moved through a waterfall curtain into an artificial cave with much more dramatic scenery. A sheet of masking bubbles disguised the transition as a "dive" to greater depth.

They were passing through the graveyard of sunken treasure ships, with the five in the cabin scanning intently for signs of the Rocket Crown, which would be easy to miss if it were heaped among the fake gold and jewels.

"Now, I want everyone to remember: there are _no such things_ as mermaids," Donald went on, despite the lifelike figures of mermaids swimming around the scene. It was at best an imprecise rendition of the attraction's script, but he obviously wasn't going for accuracy.

Suddenly, the _Sea Wolf_ lurched, eliciting startled squeals from the passengers. More bubbles flooded from the external ports, obscuring the scene. The vessel's internal machinery emitted odd groaning noises and the cabin lights abruptly shut off, leaving only the dim illumination that filtered in through the portholes. Everything tilted, followed by a powerful jolt that threw them all from their seats. Then the sub shuddered to a halt.

"Gawrsh, what happened?" came Goofy's wail in the darkness.

"We must have jumped the track," said Mickey. "Everybody stay put." It wasn't the end of the world—they could continue their search via the maintenance catwalks that spanned the cave above the water, and worry about re-railing the submarine later. Mickey got to his feet and began groping his way along the canted floor toward the nose of the boat. He hadn't gotten very far when the cabin was suddenly bathed in red light from a bare bulb on the wall.

This made it technically easier to see, but harder to navigate. The one-dimensional quality of the dim light distorted his sense of perspective, making the cabin seem the wrong size, though it shifted between being too large and too small. He kept missing the handrails he was reaching for, or catching them with his wrist (ouch!) instead of his hand.

"Uh-oh…" came Donald's forlorn voice over the speakers.

Mickey finally managed to reach the front of the sub and climb the short ladder to the raised operator's platform. The reason for Donald's distress became immediately evident—the simple, straightforward controls had been replaced with a broad panel covered with rows of dials, switches, and ominously blinking red and green lights.

Mickey gave a low whistle of astonishment, but he had supposed something like this might happen. "I guess we didn't exactly jump the track after all," he said. "No problem though, right? You know how to start it back up?"

"Uuuhhhhhhhhhhh…" Donald stalled, his eyes flickering over the daunting array of controls. He put one hand over his eyes and made as if to stab randomly at the panel with the other.

Mickey caught his finger. "You don't know how, do you?" he accused.

Donald shook his head and grinned sheepishly.

"Donald! You said you knew how to drive a real submarine!"

"But Mickey! I didn't want to disappoint you!"

Mickey smacked himself between the eyes and slowly wiped his whole face with his hand. He forced a cheerful expression. "That's okay! We'll figure it out! I mean, how hard can it be? These things are built by the military—they have to be idiot-proof!"

He probably would have chosen his words more carefully if he had realized that the cabin address system was still turned on. The four members of the party still in the belly of the sub traded nervous looks.

Through a certain amount of trial and error, Mickey and Donald found the controls for the interior lights (a major improvement over the red bulbs), the klaxons, the exterior spotlights, and, in one memorable instance, the torpedoes. Finally, they managed to get the submarine's engines running. A little more experimentation, and the _Sea Wolf_ cranked itself up off the sea bottom and began moving forward again. Luckily, it was not appreciably damaged by the minor crash, and the steering controls turned out to be more intuitive than they had seemed at first.

Mickey returned to the cabin, where he found the rest of his friends blinking in disbelief at their transformed surroundings. The space was still occupied mostly by a double row of flip-down seats corresponding to the portholes, but it had sprouted several additional facilities—a sonar surveillance station, a periscope, and a set of bunks to the rear.

"This is incredible!" Daisy gawked. "It's just like a _real_ submarine!"

"I think it _is_ a real submarine," Goofy observed. He made a start. "We'd better get to our posts!" He lunged for the periscope station, only to crash into the swivel seat and rotate at high speed for several seconds, hollering, until he ran out of momentum. But that was typical. Before long, they were well underway, cruising perhaps a dozen feet (or, more appropriately, two fathoms) above the ocean floor, each of them attentive to his or her assigned tasks.

Minnie was round-eyed as she stared out of her porthole at an underwater tableau that was all too real for comfort. "Where do you suppose we are, Mickey?" she asked. "How will we get back?"

"We're still in the Submarine Lagoon, of course," he replied. "This is just like what happened with the Rivers of America before…it's still the park attraction, but it's real at the same time."

"Hmm…" Daisy mused, tapping at the sonar screen. "We're picking up on something moving out there. It's a lot smaller than we are, but moving at a pretty good clip. Oh! Now there's another one! They're practically on top of us!"

Mickey pulled back from his porthole in fright as a long, streamlined shape glided past. "_Sharks!_" he yelped. He quickly composed himself. "I mean, look! Sharks!"

There were several of them, attracted to the vicinity of the submarine by the vibrations of its engines. Most were blues and white-tips, although one bore the unmistakable silhouette of a hammerhead. They seemed content to circle the sub, lightly nosing the hull from time to time as though curious about it. At first, Pluto sniffed eagerly at the portholes every time one neared, but soon gave up when he realized that he couldn't smell through the glass.

"Do you think _they're_ real?" Minnie wondered.

"They certainly move like real sharks," said Daisy. "I'm not about to stick my arm outside to see if they bite it, though."

"Don't be afraid, Minnie," Mickey said helpfully. "They can't get in."

"I'm not afraid!" she protested. "I know they can't get in…but what about when we find the Rocket Crown? One of _us_ will have to go _out_ to pick it up!"

Mickey pursed his lips. "You're right. Goofy! See if we've got an armored diving suit onboard, would you?"

"Sure thing, Mickey!" Goofy said, trying to salute and managing to smack both his hand and his head on the periscope eyepiece in the process. "Ow! A-hyuk!" He then got up and went to busy himself in the storage lockers at the far end of the cabin.

"I can hardly see a thing with all these sharks in the way," Minnie complained. "Can't we scare them away? Without hurting them, of course."

"You know, I think we can!" Mickey mused. "If this submarine is the realization of the one simulated in the ride, there should be a way to electrify the hull specifically in order to drive away dangerous animals." He called toward the front of the vessel. "Donald! Hey, Donald!"

Donald stuck his head into view. "What is it, Mickey?"

"See if you can turn on the repellent charge to get rid of these sharks. Just a low setting at first—we only want to scare them away."

"Can do, pal!" Donald agreed, disappearing again. After a moment, the sharks all seemed to startle at once and swiftly swam away.

"Thanks, Donald!"

"Huh? But I didn't do anything!"

"Then what scared the sharks away?" asked Minnie.

"Probably this new thing I'm detecting here," said Daisy with concern, pointing to her sonar screen. "Mickey, I think you'd better come look at this!"

Mickey and Minnie both crowded over Daisy's shoulder, watching on her monitor as the small, friendly blip that indicated the _Sea Wolf_ headed straight for a huge, shifting _something_.

"What is it?" asked Minnie.

"I can't imagine," Daisy admitted. "I don't think it's quite solid because of the way it keeps shifting, see? But you'd think anything less than solid would disperse, and it's not doing that either."

"Well, whatever it is, we're about to crash right into it!" Mickey exclaimed. "_Donald! Hard to port, NOW!_"

The cabin tilted crazily as Donald obeyed the frantic command, throwing all of them to the floor. Goofy, still rooting around the in the storage lockers, had the worst of it as their entire contents came flying out to bury him against the port side wall. The sub rocked to a halt, leaving all of them breathless and desperately curious about the fate they had narrowly avoided.

The water was murky at this depth, leaving them with not much of a view out the starboard side portholes. Mickey had Donald bring up the exterior spotlights, and as a group, they gasped in dismay.

There, resting on a pedestal-like rock formation, was the Rocket Crown—a gorgeous incongruity in the undersea gloom, all gold and sapphire and pearls. And there, surrounding it in a dense cloud as vast as a pod of whales, circling it and clustering about it (but always keeping a distance of a few feet), daring the heroes to try and claim it, were…things. Hideous, hostile things.

Mickey's spirits dropped, and he could almost hear Maleficent's chuckle of triumph.

To Be Continued…

_A/N: I would like to take this moment to thank my readers once again for their wonderful, encouraging reviews. I don't know what I'd do without you guys_—_keep posting chapters, probably, since I like to finish what I start. But I wouldn't have as much to look forward to after each one! _

_In case you're wondering, I miss the Submarine Voyage as much as Minnie does. I'm pleased as punch that there are only months to go before it re-opens with a brand new _Finding Nemo_ theme and, as I understand it, some really spiffy projection technology._


	11. Chapter 11

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 11: Myriad Legions

Ideas, as any creative person will agree, are not merely the products of the minds that conceive them. The good ones have a life of their own—some might even say a _will_ of their own. Artists of all kinds speak of the irresistible _drive_ to create, as though a resolve other than their own spurs their imaginations. The experience of having a notion come from seemingly nowhere and captivate one's thoughts, demanding to be developed, is a common one. Minds are as much subject to ideas as vice-versa.

The Dispirations, at least until Maleficent took them into her service, were what remained of those ideas that had failed to impress upon their creators their need to _be_, and been lost, their own will to persist the only thing sparing them from total dissolution into the formless matrix of Inpotentia. But they were not the only unrealized ideas inhabiting that void of awesome potential. What of those brainchildren that made it further? The ones remembered, even if they were never cultivated, or the ones partially developed? What of the dreams that _did_ become reality, only to later fade into obscurity, remembered largely through hearsay?

As the aftereffects of Maleficent's spell continued to weaken the intangible barriers between "is" and "might be," one such being sat up and took notice.

* * *

For several long minutes, the only sounds were the chirps of the _Sea Wolf_'s instruments, the muted rush of currents outside, and six very alarmed heartbeats. There was no need for anyone to say it, because they were all thinking it: _What_ are_ those things?_

The creatures massed about the Rocket Crown came in a bewildering variety, no two quite alike. Most were dark-colored, blending into the dimness until they darted into the glare of the spotlights, but here and there were glimpses of sickly pale, like ghosts sliding through the water. The horde was spangled with flashing reflections from their eyes and spots of phosphorescence like those of deep-sea fishes. Indeed, many of them resembled, to a greater or lesser extent, some of the uglier creatures of the abyss—viperfish with teeth like a battery of sewing needles, cavern-mouthed anglers and gulper eels, translucent squid with outrageously long tentacles and bulging eyeballs. Others were goblinesque, with grasping webbed hands and glowering slimy faces, undeniably aquatic despite their humanoid shapes. Still others looked like bizarre hybrids of two or more forms, the whole somehow more frightening than the mismatched parts.

None of them were very large—two to three feet long seemed to be the average—but the sheer number of them, combined with the horror of their appearance and their clearly aggressive demeanor, more than made up for their lack of individual size. To venture among them would be suicidal madness.

"This is Maleficent's doing," Mickey said with steel in his voice. "Goofy, were you able to find a diving suit?"

"Mickey!" gasped Minnie. "You're not planning on going out there, are you?"

"Someone has to," he said. "We need that crown, no matter how hard she tries to stop us. Well, Goofy?"

"Aw, shucks, Mickey!" the gangly dog whimpered. "I don't want you goin' out there and puttin' yourself in harm's way either!"

"I promise I'll be careful," he replied gently. "And anyway, have you noticed how those creatures are staying away from the crown itself? If I can just reach it, everything should be all right."

"I don't know," Donald said dubiously. "That's a pretty big _if_. Those things look really mean…and there's _thousands_ of them!"

"It's a risk I'll have to take. So, Goofy—the suit?"

"Right," Goofy sighed, returning to the heap of miscellaneous equipment that had tumbled out of the storage lockers. The thing he rummaged out of the pile could almost as easily have been a _space_suit, with a spherical helmet, iron-encased boots, and a long air hose in lieu of an oxygen tank. It looked old enough to have been manufactured by Jules Verne himself, but fortunately well maintained, like a treasured family heirloom.

"Nice work, Goofy!" Mickey said, trying to sound perky and optimistic. "I'd like to see a puny little fish bite through that!"

"Are you sure it's safe?" asked Daisy. "It looks practically antique! Will it even fit you?"

"Only one way to find out," said Mickey, taking the buff-colored suit from Goofy—and immediately collapsing under the weight of all the ironwork. "Yikes! This thing weighs a ton!"

"Oh, Mickey! Let me help you!" Minnie cooed, rushing toward him. Donald joined her, announcing with some pride that this was a task he most definitely _was_ trained to perform.

The diving suit was very complicated to put on; each piece was reinforced with watertight seals where it joined its neighbors, and these had to be clamped in place with screws and bolts. Under the pressure of deep water, the slightest leak would be disastrous. It seemed far too baggy at first, until they realized that the extra room was for air to be pumped in through the hose, not only for breathing but to counteract that same pressure. It really _was_ a lot like a spacesuit, even if some of the problems it was designed to tackle were the opposite of those found in the vacuum of outer space.

It wasn't comfortable to wear, although Mickey was sure he'd be able to ignore it once he was outside the submarine and had more important things to worry about. The helmet was especially awkward—too small to accommodate his ears in their normal position, it forced the iconic appendages to fold against his head in a way that wasn't too bad for now but would almost certainly become a pinching ache later on. He knew it couldn't be helped; a more capacious globe would have been impossible to balance for the extra weight and girth. His manual dexterity was much reduced by the thick gloves, making it a lucky thing that he wouldn't need much of it to carry Wart's crown out, and the Rocket Crown back.

The other end of the air hose was attached to a pumping device that was, happily, rather less old than the suit itself, and ran on electricity. Daisy found the airlock leading to the outside, with a small circular aperture between the inner doors for the hose to run through. There was no such hole in the outer doors, leading them to conclude that they were meant to remain open while someone was working outside. Donald worked out the airlock control pad, and suddenly it was time for Mickey to go and face the swarm of mysterious marine monsters guarding the crown.

He tucked Wart's crown under one arm, stood before the airlock, and faced his comrades. "Well…" he said nervously, trying to think of some brave words.

Minnie lunged forward to hug him as best she could through the bulky diving suit. "Just be careful!" she commanded him in the very fierce voice she used when she was scared and trying not to be.

"You got it, Minnie," Mickey replied. "Oh, and Donald? Until I get back, you're in charge."

Donald nodded and opened the airlock, and Mickey strode inside. It was small, about the size of an office cubicle, and looked smaller through the eight-inch circle of glass that was Mickey's window on the world while he was wearing the diving helmet. Goofy started up the air pump, and the suit began to swell. Then Donald closed the airlock doors, the little round aperture pressed snugly around the hose, and Mickey gulped, feeling a bit claustrophobic on at least two levels, and anxious to get this over with.

There was a mechanical grumble, and seawater began pouring into the airlock through pipes in the walls. Mickey shifted his grip on Wart's crown, hoping the moisture and salt wouldn't ruin the velvet and ermine, and focused on remaining calm as the chamber slowly filled. The water rose up around him, all the way to the ceiling…and then the outer doors of the airlock slid open and Mickey Mouse sallied forth.

Walking was an exercise in strength and patience, because for all that it freely flows, water is many hundreds of times as dense as air. The weight of the diving suit, keeping Mickey's feet firmly planted on the sea bottom, didn't help matters. He pressed on, the air hose paying out behind him, plodding toward the Rocket Crown and its ferocious-looking sentinels.

It wasn't long before they reacted to his presence. The first one to break ranks and charge at Mickey was one of the hybrids, a blue-grey monster with numerous crablike legs and a fringe of jellyfish tendrils. It scrabbled menacingly at him with all of these, and if not for the protection of the suit he would have felt quite endangered. As it was, he was able to brush the creature away with little effort and continue forward undaunted. A few more followed up with attacks of their own, to no greater effect. Feeling better about the prospect of walking among them, and getting the hang of maneuvering in the cumbersome suit, Mickey picked up his pace a little.

Now that he was no longer so timid of the eerie beasts, Mickey took the opportunity to regard them with a little objectivity. That Maleficent was responsible for their presence, possibly even their existence, was definite, but what _were_ they? The sheer variety of their shapes was astounding, the only commonalities being that all were fearsome, and all looked right at home in the ocean. As Mickey drew closer to the main part of the throng, he became aware that some were not even animal in nature, resembling animate tangles of seaweed or—strangest of all—small eddies and whirlpools that somehow had an existence independent of the water around them. In fact, he realized, glancing around the shifting cloud of their bodies, they seemed to represent anything and everything that humanity had ever found to fear about the sea.

They grew more agitated the closer he got to the crown, but no more attacked him, though they did try to prevent him from passing by clustering more tightly between him and the prize. They were reckless in their movements; as he watched, a dusky shark-like fish crashed headlong into something pale and soft-bodied…but instead of glancing off each other, the two _fused_ into one creature, with some features of both. Perhaps that explained the hybrids, but it added another dimension of mystery to the beings.

Shaking his head to dispel the bafflement, Mickey plowed on through the seething wall of monsters attempting to bar his way. The further he got, the more concerted their efforts to hold him back became, but in the diving suit he massed more than any ten of them, and they seemed to have lost the will to attack him outright. He soon reached the eye of the storm, the area immediately surrounding the Rocket Crown where the creatures, for whatever reason, dared not go.

Even in the harsh, actinic glare of the _Sea Wolf_'s spotlights, it was lovely, its simple, clean-lined design well suited to the ultramodern look of Tomorrowland. With its slender points molded in the shape of the Moonliner and joined by arcs of pearly orbs evoking distant moons and planets, it was the perfect representation of the world of the future…and of Disneyland's second decade, when Tomorrowland was the hottest area in the park. Back in the Fifties and Sixties, of course, everyone had assumed that the most immediate, dramatic technological improvements would be in the area of transportation and space exploration, hence the profusion of vehicle-based attractions. Hardly anyone had expected that communications and computing would advance the fastest.

Mickey approached the Rocket Crown and prepared to merge it with Wart's crown, when an abrupt change in his surroundings caught his notice. He was suddenly, devastatingly aware that the monsters had stopping circling and arranged themselves in a dense formation around him, each one directly facing him, and motionless save for the flutter of gills and whatever movements were needed to maintain its position. Waiting…

His pulse leaped, but there was really no other course he could take. He lofted Wart's crown defiantly, letting them all get an eyeful, and then brought it into forceful "contact" with the intangibility of the Rocket Crown.

As before, there was an explosion of brilliant light, radiating from the two crowns in a surge of sheer white-gold glory, accompanied by shockwaves that drove the looming creatures back several feet and even rocked the _Sea Wolf_ a bit. Mickey stood firm until the display was over, glanced down quickly to confirm the Rocket Crown in his hands, and then turned to make a mad dash for the safety of the submarine before his opponents recovered from their shakeup.

Only, naturally, he couldn't dash. The water was too thick, the diving suit far too weighty. Before he made it three steps, they were upon him in a mob of teeth and claws and tentacles, and all he could think was that he should have known it had been too easy…

* * *

Aboard the _Sea Wolf_, the rest of the Sensational Six were in a state of near panic over Mickey's predicament. They could no longer see him for the throng of attacking creatures, but there was no missing the Rocket Crown when it tumbled out of the fray, glinting in the stark spotlight. Then it too was lost to sight as a contingent of aquatic horrors descended upon it. 

"What'll we do?" Goofy wailed. "We gotta help Mickey, but there aren't any more divin' suits!"

"Can we pull him back using the air hose?" asked Minnie.

"That's a swell idea!" said Goofy. "_Hang on, Mickey, we're gonna reel ya back in!_" He scrambled over to the airlock and yanked on the hose with all his might, to no effect.

"Stop that!" Donald snapped. "If it was loose enough to move, it would leak! We'll have to find another way."

"What about the torpedoes?" suggested Daisy. "We can blast those hideous little freaks right out of the water!"

"No way!" said Minnie. "We'd be sure to blast Mickey too! We need something more precise…like a miracle!"

Pluto, who had been nosing around in the piled equipment from the storage lockers, sat up and barked sharply. The others looked over to see the tawny dog holding a harpoon in his teeth.

"That's great, Pluto," said Daisy, "but how will we get it out there to be of any use?"

"I've got it!" said Donald. He snatched the spear from Pluto, took a hard look at the disturbing scene outside, and ran to a circular hatch in the side of the submarine, tossing his hat to one side. Working quickly, he opened it and made as though to crawl through.

"Donald, what are you doing?" Minnie gawked. "That's not a—a _torpedo tube_, is it?"

Donald gave her a look of understated terror. "If you've got a better idea, I'd _really_ like to hear it. This is the only way _I_ can think of to get outside in time to help Mickey."

"That's crazy!" Daisy burst out. "Just because you're a waterfowl doesn't mean you have gills! Donald Duck, I forbid you to…under no circumstances are you to…" She trailed off, staring hopelessly at her petrified but resolved boyfriend, who had probably never done anything this courageous before in his life, and might never have the guts to do so again, especially not if she made it any harder on him than it already was. She stepped forward shyly. "Go get 'em, tiger."

"Thanks, Daisy," said Donald. "The launch button is on the main control panel. It's the big red one." He hoisted himself up into the tube. "Until Mickey and I get back, you're in charge." Then he pulled the hatch closed after himself.

Daisy made sure it was secure before heading up to the operator's platform. To her credit, she hesitated only briefly before pressing the launch button and sending the duck she loved whizzing like an unprotected arrow out into the unforgiving environment of a deep sea teeming with unfathomable enemies.

"Daisy?" Minnie called up to her in a voice thick with worry. "Are you all right?"

"Minnie," the other responded softly. "We are both the luckiest girls on Earth."

"Wow!" Goofy exclaimed, watching out the portholes. "Look at Donald go!"

Mickey had been right, back in Frontierland of 1955: Donald was indeed the best swimmer of the six of them. It was partly anatomy, partly training, and partly pure stubbornness that made him so. Unencumbered by anything more than the harpoon and the shirt on his back, he maneuvered easily through the water, jabbing furiously at any creatures he encountered. He estimated that he could hold his breath for three minutes, at which point he would have to make for the airlock, with or without Mickey, and trust the others to manage things after that.

Minnie's idea to retrieve her sweetheart by means of the air hose had been a good one, needing only a slight modification concerning the location of the one doing the retrieving. Donald kicked his way over to the long lifeline, grabbed it with his free hand, and hauled on it. There was no resistance whatsoever, and his surprise at discovering this gave way to shock when the severed end of it, streaming bubbles from the pump, emerged from the knot of frenzied monsters. He quickly knotted it off a few feet from the end, to prevent any more air escaping uselessly from the submarine, and charged into the swarm, hellbent on rescuing his best friend by any means necessary.

Thirty seconds and counting.

Several beasts assaulted him before he had quite reached the main mass of them, lashing out with a horrendous array of natural weapons. It was then that Donald began to feel the first pangs of real fear—not mere nervous dread, but genuine terror—for every blow the creatures landed brought with it not only a physical sting, but also a mental one, an instantaneous experience of sensory misery shot directly into the most vulnerable part of his psyche. Donald had to suppress the reflex to holler in pain and fright, lest he run out of breath right then and there.

He laid about himself with the harpoon, his free hand, and both feet, and was rewarded when his adversaries retreated, hissing with displeasure. His victory was only temporary, however. Before his disbelieving eyes, the creatures huddled together, wrapping various appendages around each other as though participating in a disturbing group hug, and then merged with each other, their forms melting together like chunks of wax in a double boiler, until they were one composite monster, as large and as fearsomely armed as all its individual components combined. With an alien shriek of rage, it lunged at Donald, bristling with fangs and spines and razor-edged fins and whiplike tentacles and malice.

Panic took over, and the duck fled before his attacker, adrenaline propelling him forward at speeds normally associated only with sail-backed sport fishes—directly toward the main cluster of creatures. As he approached, his pursuer snapping at his heels, a few of them noticed and turned ominously to face him, leaving him sandwiched between perils. Operating on pure survival instinct, Donald made a sharp upward turn at the very last instant, and the horror chasing him plowed right into the crowd of its fellows, dispersing many of them. Donald pulled up short, realizing that the immediate danger was over…and caught a glimpse of Mickey, trapped in the center of the horde.

The mouse was still barely holding his own against the monsters, but he was in serious trouble. For starters, he had only one hand to fight with, since the other was occupied with clamping his severed air hose shut. (Either he hadn't had the presence of mind to tie it, or he hadn't been able to.) Even with that hole plugged, the diving suit was seeping fine bubbles from every joint, and there was a minute crack in the glass of the helmet. Several creatures were clinging to Mickey, worrying at the suit in a relentless effort to tear it wide open, while others battered at him from all sides, breaking his concentration.

Donald took in all this in the split second before the scattered beasts closed in again, cutting off his view of his friend. With new resolve, he adjusted his grip on the harpoon and literally dove into the fray, ignoring the snatches of pain they dealt to him…and the faint nagging he was beginning to get from his lungs. He had been outside the submarine for going on two minutes at this point—two minutes of strenuous activity.

His opponents were savage, to be sure, but not half so savage as Donald Duck when he was angry. And few things made him angrier than threats to his loved ones. He wasn't sure what effect—if any—his aggressive flailing was having on the creatures other than to shove them out of the way, but that was enough for him. In very short order, he had broken through the barrier and come within arm's reach of the struggling Mickey.

"_Donald?_" Mickey gaped, his voice sounding oddly tinny from inside the helmet. "Are you _crazy_? What are you doing out here with no—"

Donald tried to communicate, via frenetic hand gestures, that he was there to help and had only about a minute of air left, and doubted that Mickey had much more than that, but he didn't feel he was getting his meaning across. It didn't help that both their attentions were divided between each other and the persistently attacking creatures, more of which were fusing together into larger, ever more outlandishly equipped monsters.

"Don't worry about me!" Mickey commanded as an armored beast plowed into his helmet, lengthening the crack in the glass. "Find the Rocket Crown!"

_Nuts to that!_ Donald thought, wishing he could say it out loud. He was really starting to feel the lack of oxygen, and surmised that Mickey was too, judging by the way he was slowing down. Water was beginning to leach, one slow droplet at a time, through the crack in the diving helmet. It was a wonder the glass plate hadn't already shattered altogether under the pressure. Something almost as large as Mickey himself, with suckered tentacles and blade-like claws, attached itself to him and began methodically sawing at the material of the suit.

"_Go!_" Mickey shouted breathlessly.

Donald firmly shook his head, darted in close, seized the cut end of the air hose with his free hand, and made a mad break for the submarine, desperation providing him the strength to move at speed even with such a weighty cargo…not quite enough speed, however, to outdistance the swiftest of their assailants for long. As the first wave of pursuing creatures overtook them, Donald lost his grip on Mickey, who quickly sank once again to the sea bottom.

By a surprising turn of fortune, he landed not two feet away from where a small group of the monsters were flocking around the Rocket Crown. They seemed to be trying to make off with it, but having no success because of a certain lack of organization. Mickey didn't waste the opportunity to retrieve his prize, even though maintaining his hold on it required both hands, and that meant there was nothing holding the air hose shut. Not that it mattered much by now—water was trickling in at a dozen places already where the creatures had damaged the suit, and those places were growing in both size and number under the ministrations of the thing with the bladed claws. Hedging his bets, Mickey held his breath while he still had some good air left, held the crown close to his chest, and waited for Donald to reach him again.

Donald, meanwhile, was in the process of executing what he thought (hoped) was a fairly clever escape plan. The length of air hose still attached to the _Sea Wolf_ was swelling like a balloon behind the knot he had tied in it—those aboard had not switched off the pump. Not bothering to fight off the monsters except as necessary to keep moving—he had come to realize that the only real safety from them was in the confines of the submarine—he made a beeline for the hose, grabbed the slack end of it, and just as directly returned to where Mickey was huddled, protecting the Rocket Crown with everything he had left. Donald made a loop of the hose around Mickey, held on tight, and jabbed the harpoon into the inflated portion.

It worked! The resulting air jet, with a little steering, carried them straight for the sub and its invitingly open airlock, much faster than Donald could swim even on his best day. He was exhausted and his head was pounding and his lungs were burning for air, but he couldn't suppress a smirk of victory as he risked a look back over his shoulder to see the creatures falling behind. They were going to make it!

He had reckoned without the blade-clawed beast, which was still clinging to Mickey and which, just as they came within mere yards of the airlock, sliced through the loop of hose binding the hapless mouse to the makeshift vehicle and began dragging him off in the opposite direction!

Donald screamed out the last of his air in dismay and made a swiping grab for his friend, but caught only the Rocket Crown, which Mickey had dropped in the shock of being abducted. In the next instant, the jetting bubbles drove Donald into the airlock. Before he could act in his weakened, oxygen-deprived state, the doors closed, separating them.

* * *

"Okay!" Minnie piped. "The outer doors are fully shut! I'm going to open the inner doors!" 

"Wait!" Daisy protested. "Don't you have to drain the airlock first?"

"There's no time!" was Minnie's frantic reply. "We'll just have to get wet!" She stabbed at the control panel in consternation. "Come on! Override, override!"

After an interminable moment, the airlock opened, spilling a couple thousand gallons of water into the submarine's cabin, along with the Rocket Crown and a very bedraggled, half-drowned Donald Duck.

"Oh! Poor baby!" Daisy squealed, hurrying through the sloshing brine to her boyfriend's aid. He coughed up about a pint of seawater and sat up wearily. "Oh, you brave, heroic duck!" She showered him with kisses.

"But where's Mickey?" Minnie demanded. "Donald, he was with you! I saw him! Where is he?"

Donald snapped back to full alertness. "Mickey!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet and stumbling through the now swampy cabin to the starboard portholes. The others followed, dreading what they would see.

The creatures were still there, milling about rapidly as though distressed. A few of them, including the blade-clawed one, lay motionless on the ocean floor among the disconnected pieces of the ravaged diving suit. But of Mickey Mouse there was no visible sign at all. He seemed to have vanished without a trace.

"No," Minnie whispered, tears beginning to spill from her eyes.

To Be Continued…

_A/N: This chapter represents a personal record for me: the longest and probably the most intense action sequence I have ever written. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I made myself nervous writing it, either, even knowing what the outcome would be. I can only imagine what it must be like for all of you out there in Readerland, sitting on a cliffhanger like this one, which is why I will make every effort to get the next chapter out quickly so you don't bite your nails too deeply fretting over poor Mickey's fate._

_On another note, I confess to invoking Cartoon Physics for a few of the events in this chapter. So if you notice something that seems implausible according to cold, hard science (I'm looking at you, DemonicK!), it was probably deliberate and not worth worrying about. _

_Anyway, there's more action-y goodness to come! Stay tuned!_


	12. Chapter 12

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 12: Help From Unexpected Quarters

Principally, it resembled a lobster in both size and form, albeit with an extra pair of powerful pincers and a tail that no one would ever want to see on their dinner plate. Its eyes, though, were huge and staring and softly luminescent and not remotely crustacean. It scratched gently at the inside of the bubble as though in a half-hearted escape attempt.

"Where did you say you found it again?" asked Merlin.

"Between the Matterhorn and the Submarine Lagoon," Merryweather repeated patiently.

"Fascinating," the aged wizard said, prodding the bubble with one finger, as one might a fishbowl. "Hello in there, little one."

"Good gracious, Merlin, it's not a pet!" Flora gasped. "It's a servant to Maleficent!"

"I'm certain it can't do any harm as long as it's in there. I trust you ladies' abilities."

The three Good Fairies had encountered the strange creature by a stroke of luck during one of their many retreads of Fantasyland, when they got so turned around that they started veering toward Tomorrowland…and discovered the lobster-thing aimlessly wandering the walkway. That it was connected to Maleficent was unquestionable; they could recognize her handiwork when they saw it. Merryweather had been all set to turn it into stone or snow and end the threat it posed, but the other two had quickly convinced her that there might be more value in capturing it instead. So, together, the three of them had imprisoned it inside a shimmering magic bubble.

It was exactly the sort of development that Mickey would have wanted to hear about right away, but they had no idea how to find or contact him, and they found it a daunting prospect to mind their eerie captive indefinitely while they waited for him to turn up. It was Fauna who had suggested showing it to Merlin, in a rare burst of insight from the normally timid member of the trio.

"What do you make of it, Merlin?" asked Merryweather as the wizard squinted and frowned at the peculiar beast.

"Eh? Don't you know?" he replied absently. "I thought you three were the experts on Maleficent's magic."

"Oh, but she's never used _anything_ like this before!" Fauna emoted.

"So what makes you think she's using it now?" said a grumpy (as usual) Archimedes. "You three took care of it easily enough. I should think Maleficent would employ something a bit more dangerous as her lackey." The creature made a sound, a sort of purring coo that sounded the opposite of threatening.

"Now, now, now, Archimedes," Merlin chided easily. "We don't know what this thing's true purpose is, or whether there are any others. I daresay an army of them would be quite menacing. In any case, if these three lovely ladies say it's to do with Maleficent, then by Jove, it's to do with Maleficent!" The three Good Fairies tittered shyly at the flattery.

"If you say so," Archimedes huffed, turning around on his perch and putting his head under his wing to signal the end of the conversation.

"I shall certainly study this creature further," said Merlin. "You ladies will be returning to your patrol, I presume?"

"Yes, we really should be going," said Flora. "Do let us know what you find out, won't you?"

"Yes, yes, of course. I'll send Archimedes to find you." The ball of feathers on the perch made a loud "_Hmph!_"

The Good Fairies waddled out of Merlin's library. "Do you really think it's safe, leaving that thing in there?" Merryweather wondered. "All Merlin's books and things are there. What if Maleficent's using it as a spy? If it escapes…"

"I'm sure it will be all right, dear," said Fauna, putting a reassuring hand on Merryweather's shoulder. "Merlin may be just a teensy bit scatterbrained at times, but he really is a very powerful wizard. I'm sure nothing will go wrong."

* * *

The atmosphere aboard the _Sea Wolf_ was not funereal. It was far too tense for that.

Minnie had sunk, pale and trembling, into one of the seats lining the cabin and was staring blankly ahead, making no sound even though tears were pouring down her face. One of her hands rested on Pluto's head where he had lain it despondently in her lap. It was entirely possible that she would respond if spoken to, but no one wanted to take the risk just yet. Daisy settled for sitting on an overturned bucket next to her, shoulders held in a conspicuously rigid pose in case Minnie needed one of them to cry on.

"Donald, it's _not_ your fault!" she said for probably the fifth or sixth time. "I watched you do everything you could to save Mickey. And who says you didn't succeed? We have no idea what happened out there between the time you landed in the airlock and the time we realized he had disappeared. Why not hope for the best?"

Donald's only reply was to kick violently at the miscellaneous objects that sat in his path as he stalked restlessly about the submarine. They were a poor substitute for what he really wanted to beat up: himself. His failure to rescue his best friend had left him in a funk of self-loathing. But at least he seemed more reachable in that state than Minnie in her near-catatonia.

"Daisy's right," said Goofy. "You did your best, and now we have to think about what to do next. Wherever Mickey's got to, I'm sure he'd want us to keep goin' with the quest until he can get back together with us."

"Exactly!" agreed Daisy. "I say we take this tub back up to the surface and get the Rocket Crown over to the Castle."

"_No!_" Donald protested. "We can't move ahead in time without Mickey! What if he gets stuck here in 1965?"

"Well, we should at least get to a point where we can get out of this submarine," Daisy reasoned. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm tired of having wet feet." She gestured around the cabin, which was still ankle-deep in seawater.

"Say, fellas?" said Goofy, glancing nervously out the starboard portholes.

"Well, _I_ say we keep looking for Mickey down here!" Donald argued. "And he left _me_ in charge, so what I say, goes!"

"Uh…" said Goofy.

"Not so fast, buster," said Daisy, rising to her feet and setting her arms akimbo. "_You_ left _me_ in charge, and your exact words were 'until Mickey and I get back.' I see you, but I don't see him, and that means _I'm_ still in charge."

Donald opened his beak to retort, but nothing came out. Daisy's loophole had left him speechless.

"Listen, you two," Goofy broke in. "Can you please hurry up and decide who's in charge so I know who to tell about _that_?" He pointed emphatically to the ocean outside.

The feuding ducks stopped the dispute cold and ran to see what had him so worked up. The horrible creatures had stopped their purposeless drifting and were gathering in a dense knot some distance away from the _Sea Wolf_, right at the edge of visibility. It was impossible to tell exactly what they were up to, but the generalities of their behavior had Donald deeply worried.

"Uh-oh…" he murmured.

"What? What's going on?" asked Daisy.

The horde retreated farther, until only the very edge of it could be seen, and then only on and off as the monsters rearranged themselves, changing the overall shape of the mass. From time to time, what could only be described as _things_—things much too large to belong to an individual one of the creatures—undulated in the murky haze.

"Daisy," Donald said briskly, "after much deliberation, I have decided to follow the course of action you suggest."

"Meaning…what, exactly?" she said.

"_Let's get out of here!_" was the manic reply. "Full speed ahead! Man the battle stations! _Move_, everybody!" He scrambled for the operating platform, leaving the others to work out on their own what they should do.

Daisy took a deep breath before speaking her next piece. "Okay, Minnie, time to snap out of it. We've all got work to do."

For an instant, she though Minnie hadn't even heard her. But then the mouse looked up at her with haunted eyes. "Of course," she said in a voice that sounded like it was coming from thousands of miles away. "What do you need me to do?"

"Well, for starters, I need you to perk up a little." Minnie bit her lip and looked away. "Look, I know it's hard for you right now. It's hardly any easier for the rest of us. But we have to have faith in Mickey. You of all people should know by now that he'll always come back to you. No matter what."

Minnie turned back to Daisy, a spark of hope returning to her expression. "Th-that's true," she stammered. "He's even said as much." She breathed deeply, and somewhere between the inhale and the exhale, she transformed, rising to her feet, blinking her tears away, an aura of calmly determined competence displacing the despairing fragility. "All right. What's going on?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Daisy replied, "but something outside has Donald really spooked. He said something about battle stations—"

"And no wonder!" Minnie gasped, pointing at the portholes. The darkness outside was deepening as a swirling black cloud encroached on the beams of the spotlights. As Minnie and Daisy watched in alarm, long, sinewy things began emerging from the gloom. They looked like massive serpents at first, until they came fully into the light and revealed themselves to be immense, sucker-bearing tentacles, unmistakably the appurtenances of _Architeuthis_, the infamous giant squid.

Drifting forward, the squid reached for the _Sea Wolf_.

* * *

There was a slight sense of discontinuity, followed by full, panicked awareness. Mickey lashed out in mindless desperation at his attackers.

"Whoa, take it easy," said a friendly, vaguely familiar voice. "You've been through a lot, but you're safe now."

Mickey realized that he was flailing at nothing. One outflung hand struck something spongy and rebounded. He forced himself to calm down and take stock of his surroundings. It was so dark that it made no difference at all whether he kept his eyes open or closed, but he got the impression of a cozy, homey space. He was in a reclining position, his head pillowed on what felt like the arm of an overstuffed sofa.

"There, see?" said his mysterious host. "No danger at all."

"Who…wait…Mortimer…?" Mickey guessed, basically at random.

There was a soft chuckle. "Close, but at the same time, way off."

"Then who are you? And…where am I?"

"Just take it slow, Mickey. Everything's fine, but you might find it a little hard to believe if you had to deal with it all at once."

Recollection hit Mickey like a brick to the back of the head. "Oh, no, the submarine!—the Rocket Crown!—and, oh my gosh, _Donald_! I have to get back! I have to—" He started to push himself up off the apparent sofa, only to have a pair of no-nonsense hands push him back down. Four-fingered and gloved, they reminded him strongly of Minnie's hands…or his own.

"Whoa, not so fast, hero! You're in no shape to be charging back into battle. Give yourself a little recovery break first."

"But I feel fine," Mickey protested. "How long have I been…here, anyway?"

"Not long at all. Notice you're still wet. You might feel fine lying there, but you'd find out different if you jumped up all of a sudden. And I know how your mind works…I should, anyway; it's close enough to mine. You get so caught up taking care of everyone else, you forget to take care of yourself. It's part of the selfless hero package, I guess."

Mickey, more baffled than ever, said nothing.

"I gotta hand it to you, Mickey," the other continued. "You've done real good—_real_ good. I don't think I'd have done as good, if it had been me."

"What are you talking about? The quest?" Mickey asked.

"The quest and everything else! Everything you've accomplished, everything you stand for…I don't think I'd have made it as far."

"Who _are_ you?" Mickey queried again.

Again, that soft, gentle chuckle. "I suppose you're ready to find out. Hang on a second—it's been a while since I've done this. Around here, we don't need light to see."

"Where…" Mickey began, but he trailed off as his surroundings became visible in a slow fade, like an antique television set warming up. It looked like someone's living room or den—the sofa he was lying on, a matching easy chair, a small table at the corner between the two, a modestly sized bookcase, draperies hanging on the walls. The furnishings were stylistically similar to his own preferences for interior decoration…but the walls were strange. He couldn't seem to focus on them.

Then he caught sight of his host, and forgot all about the walls.

For a split second, he thought he was looking at his exact double. But the other fellow wore overalls rather than shorts, and his unshod feet were huge. More profoundly, his ears were not round but long and thin. There were facial differences too, the sum of which was that he was clearly a rabbit…but one who looked remarkably like Mickey Mouse.

If Mickey had not already been lying down, he would have been floored. _I know him!_ There was only one possible identity for his rescuer, if indeed it _was_ possible. Mickey ventured to speak the name aloud.

"_Oswald?_"

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit made a brief bow. "Got it in one. Well, two." His voice was also similar to Mickey's, but slightly lower in pitch and with a hint of trickster-ish Down East twang.

"But…how—?"

"I know, I know. Raises more questions than it answers, don't it? Obviously, I'm not the original Oswald, or I'd look like a mime. I'm more like…the idea of what Oswald the Lucky Rabbit would have become if Walt Disney never lost the rights to him. But then we wouldn't have you, Mickey, so I'm glad I don't really exist."

"Don't really exist?" Mickey repeated. He propped himself up on his elbows, the better to look around at the room and its indistinct walls. Something about their vagueness, about the way they seemed not to be there when he wasn't looking directly at them, reminded him of something. "Is this…Inpotentia?"

"You're getting pretty good at this guessing game," Oswald grinned, showing off prominent incisors. "Yeah, this is part of Inpotentia—_my_ part of it. How much do you know about it, anyway?"

"Not much," Mickey confessed, easing up into a sitting position on the sofa while Oswald settled into the chair. "I know this is where ideas…live, I guess, before they're realized. Nothing here is really real."

"That's one way of looking at it," said Oswald. "But it might be more accurate to call Inpotentia the sum of everything that might be, but isn't. You won't find the impossible here. You also won't find the actual. But everything else…" He made a pointlessly flourishing gesture. "Sounds pretty simple, don't it?"

Mickey paused before speaking. "Is that a trick question?"

"Kind of. The thing is, it's not just a matter of being real or not. Some ideas are closer to being realized than others. The closest of all are ones like me, who _were_ real for a while until people lost interest and they faded back into obscurity. But that connection to reality remains. That's how I knew you were in trouble." He sat forward, fixing Mickey with an uncharacteristically serious look. "Bad things are afoot, Mickey, and not just in Disneyland. That Maleficent character is weakening the boundary between Inpotentia and the real world. Granted, it's always been a pretty fuzzy distinction where Disneyland and the Disney Family are concerned, but this…" He sat back again, closing his eyes and shaking his head slightly.

"The park is disconnecting from reality," Mickey said, almost to himself. "That's what Professor von Drake told us, and when we tried to see beyond the berm, it was all just swirling colors."

"That's what I'm talking about," said Oswald. "It's because of her meddling. The boundary is crossed every day, every time an idea is developed into something real, but that's the right way. Maleficent is _dragging_ things across the boundary, in both directions, and that sort of thing does damage."

"I can imagine," Mickey reasoned. "But didn't you do the same thing—drag me across—when you rescued me?"

"You complaining about being rescued?"

"Of course not!"

"Didn't think so. Anyway, it's not like I had time to figure out anything else. And if not for Maleficent messing around with the natural order of things, you wouldn't have needed rescuing in the first place, so I don't figure I did wrong."

"As long as we're on the subject…thank you," said Mickey.

"Don't mention it," Oswald said with a friendly gesture of dismissal. "The world needs Mickey Mouse—more than usual, at the moment."

Silence fell. After a moment, Oswald spoke up. "You all right?"

"I think so," Mickey replied, looking at his hands where they rested in his lap. "You were right; it's a lot to take in all at once." He looked up abruptly. "Oswald…what were those creatures that attacked us? They're from here, aren't they? From Inpotentia."

Oswald made a solemn nod. "Dispirations. On the totem pole of possibility, they're so low they're practically underground—ideas that were forgotten by their own creators before they even had a chance to become anything more. Their own fear of disappearing entirely is the only thing that keeps them going…or _was_. Apparently, Maleficent figured out how to take them across the boundary and give them some reality of their own. Earned their undying loyalty, I imagine."

"Gosh," Mickey breathed, flabbergasted. "There were thousands of those things! If those were just the ones that look like sea creatures, I hate to think how many there are altogether!"

"Now, don't jump to any conclusions," warned Oswald. "The forms they had when they attacked you didn't really belong to them." He snorted derisively. "They should be so lucky! Dispirations don't normally look like anything—remember, they're only a hair away from total non-existence. I'm guessing Maleficent sent them after you and gave them bodies fit for the job. Since you were underwater at the time, well, do the math. Not that there _aren't_ a lot more of the things, of course."

Mickey nodded slowly, understanding why Maleficent had chosen such hollow things as her servants. An empty vessel can be filled with anything you want. At the same time, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the Dispirations, even though they were arrayed dangerously against him. There was nothing to them but their desperate yearning to exist; he couldn't even imagine what that must be like except to surmise that it redefined anguish.

"I think I've given you enough to think about," said Oswald. "You ready to go back?"

"You bet I am!" Mickey confirmed. "The others must be worried sick about me by now!"

"They'll have to wait a little longer, I'm afraid. You're still not completely recovered, on top of which you didn't sleep enough last night. I'll drop you off somewhere safe and comfy so you can catch a nap."

Catch a nap…it sounded so anti-climactic. "How do you know how much I slept last night?" Mickey asked suspiciously.

"There's not much you can hide from me, Mickey," said Oswald. "We're too much alike. All I have to do is ask myself what I'd do in your big yellow shoes. So promise me you'll get some decent rest before you go back to the hero stuff, okay?"

"But I can't just leave my friends hanging like that!"

"You don't give 'em enough credit. They can manage without you for a little while longer. Is it a promise?" He held out his right hand expectantly.

Mickey smiled warmly and met the hand with his own. "It's a promise." They shook. Instead of letting go, Oswald pulled Mickey to his feet.

"You may notice a slight sense of disorientation," he said mischievously. Then he raised his other hand and twisted it in a peculiar motion, and Mickey had the extraordinary sensation of moving at right angles to all three dimensions of space. Then he fell a short distance onto something soft and springy. He had time for a few impressions of soft lighting, rose-colored fabric, and a faint scent of old cigarette smoke before exhaustion and trauma caught up with him all at once and he dropped off to sleep.

* * *

"Donald, hurry!" Daisy squealed, unable to tear her eyes away from the horrific approach of the giant squid. "Get this thing moving! And find that repellent charge while you're at it!"

"I'm _working _on it!" came Donald's petulant response.

The leaf-shaped end of one tentacle slapped the side of the submarine, suckers the size of golf balls adhering to the glass of the portholes like some grotesque parody of a car-window decoration. As if on cue, the _Sea Wolf_'s engines grumbled to life and the submarine began moving. Inertia kept the squid's huge body in place, and the relatively thin tentacle couldn't take the strain. It was forced to let go.

"Gawrsh, that was close!" Goofy sighed, flopping down into a seat with relief. The sub picked up speed rapidly.

"Don't look now, but I think it's going to be close again!" Daisy fretted, looking over the sonar screen. They were moving at nearly full speed, but a blip that could only be the squid—for it was fully as large as the submarine itself—was gaining on them by leaps and bounds.

"Take us up, Donald!" Minnie shrilled.

"I _said_ I'm _working_ on it!" Donald snapped.

The sub shuddered and lurched to one side as the squid caught up and immediately wound five or six monstrously powerful tentacles around the hull. There was a groaning of buckling steel, almost immediately drowned out by the blaring of several alarms, and the cabin was bathed in unnerving red light. Goofy yelped in fright at the sight of an eye the size of a basketball, peering in through a porthole. The eye moved off, and a moment later, a hideous beak, large enough to bite a man right in half, snapped and gouged at the glass.

"Man the torpedoes!" Goofy hollered. The metal of the _Sea Wolf's_ armored hull squealed again under the fantastic pressure, and several rivets popped out of their seams. But no leaks…yet.

"Aha!" Donald crowed from the operator's platform. "I've got an even better idea! Take this, octopus boy!"

He flicked a row of switches, and almost at once, a sizzling sound arose from every part of the submarine's shell. Minnie, standing too close to the wall, received a light shock as a thread of electricity leaped free from its channel.

The squid's grip loosened, and the noise of warping metal ceased, but the colossal mollusk remained wrapped around the submarine and continued hammering at the porthole with its fearsome beak. "Better give it more power, Donald!" Daisy called over the persistent hollering of the alarms.

"You got it, toots!" he replied, seeming almost to enjoy himself as he raised the voltage. And maybe he was; there had to be some satisfaction in taking his anger out on a wholly deserving target.

The sizzling noise increased, accompanied by cracks, thunderclaps in miniature, as more sparks lanced from the walls, attracted to the interior of the cabin by the salt water flooding the floor. The passengers scurried for any refuge they could find from the flying charges. Still the giant squid did not release the _Sea Wolf_, though it let out enough slack to put some distance between the main mass of its body and the electrified hull.

"It's still not enough!" Minnie worried. "But if Donald turns it up any higher, we'll get fried in here!"

"Maybe not," said Daisy. "Goofy, when you were looking for the diving suit, did you see anything like an inflatable raft?"

"I think so—yipe!" Goofy answered, jumping as a flare of electricity stung his backside.

"Great! Grab it and blow it up! We'll use it as insulation!"

Goofy sloshed through the sodden cabin to the increasingly chaotic heap of equipment and found the compact cube of folded rubber sheeting. "Got it!" he announced, giving the ripcord a yank. With a resounding _POP_, the raft expanded, propelling Goofy backward into the wall, where he suffered quite a jolt from the current coursing through the submarine's shell. Meanwhile, the squid was acclimating to the voltage and moving in close again.

Minnie, Daisy, and Pluto climbed into the inflated raft, which occupied most of the width of the cabin, and clustered as close to the center as they could. After a moment, Goofy recovered enough to join them, much singed and frizzled.

"Donald!" Daisy called out. "Crank up the juice as high as it'll go and step on the gas!"

"Aye, aye!" Donald responded eagerly, turning the repellent field up to maximum power, all in one go. The passengers in the raft gasped, startled, and crouched as low as they could while bolts of electricity arced overhead. It had the desired effect, though—the severe and abrupt increase in power was more than the squid could take, and it dropped the sub like a hot potato, its tentacles curling in pain. Donald gunned the engines, and the _Sea Wolf_ sped away and upward toward the freedom and safety of the surface.

After a moment, the squid recovered and began to follow, but its pursuit was sluggish, as though it were reluctant to risk another bad shock. It lagged behind as the submarine rose up through clearer and brighter water and finally emerged into the air with a great rocking motion and an accompanying splash.

Almost at once, the numerous alarms quieted and the interior lighting returned to normal. The _Sea Wolf_'s forward motion was slow and absolutely steady. And the cabin had returned to being a small and simple seating area, with no sign that it had ever been part of a functioning submarine. The raft and all other marine paraphernalia had vanished, and the only water on the floor was a thin sheen of chlorine-scented dampness.

And if all that didn't clinch it, the view out the portholes on both sides was of an animatronic sea serpent with a very silly expression.

"Hey, we're back!" Goofy observed.

"Wonderful!" Daisy exulted. "Let's get out of this tin can!"

Without even bothering to exit the artificial cave, Donald brought the _Sea Wolf_ to a stop and opened the hatch so they could all climb out into the fresh—and, more importantly, _dry_—air. Pluto carried the Rocket Crown, gripping it gingerly in his teeth. Then it was a simple matter to get onto a maintenance catwalk and follow it to a door leading out of the cave.

"I don't miss this ride anymore," Minnie sighed as she stepped back onto the solid ground of Tomorrowland.

"So what now?" asked Daisy.

"Now," said Donald, "we look for Mickey. Anyone got a problem with that?"

No one did.

To Be Continued…


	13. Chapter 13

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 13: High-Tech Chase

The Wicked Fairy Maleficent was displeased. This made her even more dangerous to be around than usual, which was why Diabolo had retired to his perch in the aerie, to wait for her bad humor to be resolved. Strangely enough, her anger expressed itself not as a raging, white-hot tantrum as it usually did, but as a chilly, even-toned reprimand for her defeated servants.

"You have failed," she told the Dispirations as they huddled on the stone floor of her lair, a horde of small creatures once more. Many of them had abandoned their aquatic bodies, which were ill suited to existence out of the water, and reverted to being patches of mist and shadow. "Surely, with as many of you as there are, it should have been no difficult task to destroy our enemies? Yet, even united, you could not fulfill this duty. Was I a fool to put my trust in you?" They writhed under her icy disapproval, discovering for the first time the gnawing, leaden emotion of guilt. She was the mistress who had given them the closest thing to life that they could ever hope to possess, and they had failed her!

"Still," said Maleficent more gently, "the mission was not a total fiasco. You may not have succeeded in annihilating our foes, but you did separate their leader from the others, which will surely hinder them. Indeed, I am not at all certain it is even possible for Mickey Mouse to be _killed_, so perhaps this is the best we could reasonably have hoped for on a first attempt. I shall give you another chance.

"But know this: I will not tolerate ineffectual tactics such as those you employed in the Submarine Lagoon. We have the advantage of numbers, but that does not mean that numbers alone will suffice to overwhelm our adversaries. We must be cunning as well. We must observe before striking and use their weaknesses against them. Remember this as you go about your task."

With that, she re-opened the portal between her sanctuary and Disneyland, and watched as the Dispirations eagerly poured through, anxious to return to the place that nurtured them into a sort of reality. Then she settled onto her throne and sighed with satisfaction. The road to victory never did run smooth.

Diabolo ventured into the room, and she held out her hand for him to alight on. He landed instead on the arm of the throne, cawed peevishly, and preened the feathers under one wing.

"It is different with them," she explained. "They are proving to be more intelligent than I thought at first, but they still have animalistic reactions…no offense to you, of course, my pet. If I ranted and raved at them, I might lose their allegiance. I must make sure that they still _wish_ to please me. They're like children, really."

Diabolo looked up suddenly and bristled, croaking deep in his throat.

"What is it, pet?"

"_Maleficent!_ I got a bone to pick with you!"

Maleficent rose from her throne in one swift, smooth motion as a dumpy figure strode stiffly into the chamber. "You!" she exclaimed. "How did you get in here?"

"That's for me to know and you to wonder!" the newcomer smirked in a sing-song voice. "Maybe if you didn't sit there so high-and-mighty all the time, thinking you're the be-all and end-all of black magic, it wouldn't surprise you so much when someone else pulls out a few tricks and gets the better of you for a change!"

Maleficent glowered down at the visitor. "I really haven't the time for this, Mim."

"HA!" Madam Mim exploded, thrusting one stubby finger in the other witch's face. "Haven't the time, indeed! By my reckoning, you've got forty years of extra time…which you bought at _my_ expense! Did you think nobody would call you on it?"

"Cease this foolish hysteria," Maleficent sniffed. "I've paid the price for my own miscalculation. In any case, you have little enough to complain about now. Remove yourself from my premises at once, before _I_ remove you."

"Don't you threaten me, Hornhead!" Mim snapped. "I'm not going anywhere until I hear from you that I'm not going to wind up a disembodied nothing floating in the middle of nowhere again!"

"Of that, at least, I can assure you. Now leave me in peace." The Wicked Fairy lowered herself to her throne again and made a gesture of dismissal.

"Not just yet, Maleficent," said Mim, calming down marginally. "You've never been Miss Sally Sociable, but you've been even more scarce than usual of late, and now this scheme of yours has most of us caught in the crossfire. _Some_ people might say you're turning on all of us, not just the goody-two-shoes!"

"There is no honor among thieves," Maleficent noted sagely, "and no camaraderie among villains. Or did you somehow think we were all members of one big, happy, evil family? Surely even someone of your…mental peculiarities can recognize the absurdity of such a notion."

"They don't call me _Mad_ Madam Mim for nothin'!" Mim said proudly. "So, whaddya say? Partners?"

Maleficent's pale face went even paler with rage as she stood once more. "Presumptuous _idiot_!" she shrieked, summoning a blast of wind to tumble the other sorceress head over heels. "As if I could gain any advantage by allying with _you_!" She panted with fury while Mim blinked wide eyes. "Enough. You have found the end of my patience—you _will _leave. Immediately!"

Madam Mim rose to her feet, straightened her skirts, and made one last indignant "Hmph!" before stalking out the way she had come in.

Someone was waiting for her. "Well, darling?"

"She didn't go for it. Oh, well. Her loss, really."

"Well, isn't that a pity shame? I suppose it's Plan B, then. Let's round up the gang."

Maleficent, meanwhile, hunched on her throne, seething. She disliked losing control like that, but that Mim had a real gift for igniting her temper. What a disgraceful excuse for villainy!

The Wicked Fairy was forced to wonder, however: just how _did_ she get into the lair?

* * *

"The first thing we need," Donald said authoritatively, "is a plan."

"Do we have any leads?" asked Daisy. "It would help if we had some idea of where to _start_ looking, at least."

"If there are any clues," Goofy noted glumly, "they're probably at the bottom of the ocean that the Submarine Lagoon turned into."

"We definitely shouldn't go back there!" Donald declared. "Maybe…" He rubbed his under-beak thoughtfully. "Maybe we should use the Sorcerer's Hat! I bet it knows how to find Mickey, and now that we know where it is—"

"Oh, Donald, please don't start," Minnie groaned. "I know you've always wanted to try out the Hat, but it's pretty low of you to use this as an excuse."

"No, Minnie, I was serious! I wouldn't betray Mickey like that!"

"Well," she said, mollified, "it wouldn't work anyway. Only Mickey can open that box. Even I can't do it—he once tried sitting there and telling the lock that it was okay to open for me, but it didn't work." She smiled fondly. "I think we should go straight to Merlin. Maybe his clairvoyance—"

She was interrupted by a burst of frantic barking from Pluto, and a jarring _clang_ as the Rocket Crown fell from his jaws to the pavement.

"Pluto!" Daisy scolded him, going after the rolling crown. "Be careful with that!"

"What's wrong, boy?" asked Minnie.

Pluto whimpered and pawed at her dress and, lacking hands, used his ears to point emphatically toward the exit of the Submarine Lagoon's artificial cave. The water there was rippling ominously and seemed to throw shadows, rather than reflected sunlight, on the surfaces around it.

"Uh-oh!" Goofy shouted sharply. "I think those…_things_ are back!"

"Where? I don't see any—" Daisy began, but broke off when spots of strangeness, like heat-shimmer made solid, began emerging from the trembling water and advancing up the sides of the lagoon basin, growing more defined as they went. Their movement was slow, almost languid, but they gave the impression of being capable of much greater speed—like panthers choosing, for the moment, to be lazy about how they stalked their prey. "Oh, dear," Daisy finished in a deceptively calm voice.

Instinctively, the five of them drew together in a tight cluster, Daisy clutching the Rocket Crown to her chest. It would have been better for them if they had run at once: the barely-visible enemies swarmed up out of the water by the hundreds and moved with increasing swiftness around them, cutting off avenues of escape. Some of them had fixed forms by now, resembling small, vaguely insectoid robots or mechanical drones.

"Come on! This way!" Donald commanded suddenly, waving the other members of the party toward the moving ramp that led up to the Monorail station. A few of the machine-creatures darted to intercept them, but he kicked them out of the way and led the group up the incline, with the rest of the enemy in hot pursuit.

By a stroke of luck, there was a sleek train parked at the station, its doors open and welcoming. "I'll take this one!" said Minnie as they piled into the driver's car. She had logged a few hours operating the Disneyland Monorail on occasion, mostly with Mickey leaning out the window waving to excited onlookers, and the procedures came back to her as she positioned herself in the driver's seat. Yes, there was the speed control, and the horn, and—

"_Minnie!_ Close the _doors_!" Daisy squawked.

"Oh! Right!" said Minnie, her hands sweeping across the dashboard. She found the right switch and listened with satisfaction as the many doors along the length of the train hissed shut, enclosing them in a comfortable, climate-controlled cabin. At once, there was a clatter as the vanguard of the robots caught up with them and bounced off the steel and glass of the train's exterior. Minnie sounded two short blasts on the horn—proper protocol dies hard—before starting the Monorail moving, accelerating quickly as it pulled away from the station.

Goofy squashed his face against a windowpane in order to get a look behind them. "They're followin' us!" he exclaimed, doing his best to point without opening the window.

"What, they can _fly_ now?" demanded Daisy, squeezing in next to him to get her own look.

"Some of 'em," Goofy clarified. "Some of 'em are just runnin' really fast!"

The majority of the little automatons had sprouted metallic wings or helicopter blades in order to engage pursuit, but the remainder seemed to have no problem keeping up by scuttling along the Monorail track behind the train, their jointed legs flashing in the sunlight.

"Let's see them follow _this_!" Minnie said with uncharacteristic grit in her voice. The Monorail's normal cruising speed on the straightaway portions of the track is around thirty miles per hour, but it is capable of significantly higher velocities, and Minnie took the opportunity to prove it, cranking up the acceleration and leaving the swarm far behind. Only a few of the flyers managed to keep pace.

The Monorail raced along Disneyland's eastern boundary, approaching the expanse of the old parking lot, empty (of course) of cars but otherwise looking much as they remembered it. More of the things chasing them were catching up, but, oddly, they made no move to attack, instead flanking the train like, of all things, an honor guard. Seen up close, they didn't resemble bugs nearly as much as they had seemed to at a hurried glance—they were boxier than any living thing, their movements less nuanced. A few even had wheels.

Donald's eyes grew wide as he realized something.

"Minnie, we're about to leave the park."

"Of course we are," she said curtly. "That's where the track _goes_."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked. "I'm thinking about what Uncle Ludwig showed us…"

Minnie stared aghast at Donald as the implication sank in. If Disneyland was disconnecting from reality, there might not even be an outside to go to! But at the speed they were moving, there was no chance of stopping before they crossed that line. "I guess we're about to find out," Minnie said, pursing her lips.

The Monorail rocketed out of the confines of the park.

Instantly, the parking lot vanished, replaced by an endless sea of swirling colors: the same they had witnessed on Professor von Drake's Cosmoscope monitor, and again in lieu of the blue sky over Tomorrowland. The Monorail train itself remained unchanged, as did the track, but the supporting pylons faded beneath it into the multihued haze. Disneyland was no longer visible behind them. They were completely immersed in the unfathomable brilliance, which looked just the same on all sides, and no matter how far into the distance they focused their gaze.

Donald and Daisy clutched at each other in awe. Goofy, deciding they had the right idea, wrapped his long arms around Pluto, who made a tiny noise somewhere between a whimper and a growl. Minnie bit her lip and continued driving, refusing to falter in her control of the vehicle.

The robots were still maintaining pace with the train, if anything keeping even closer to it, as though afraid of being lost in the shifting iridescence. Still they did not make any move to attack, and the riders in the Monorail were forced to wonder why. Did they realize that their targets were unreachable as long as they were inside the car; were they waiting for an opportune moment to strike? They hadn't seemed that calculating when they had been sea creatures.

Just ahead, the track curved to the right in a ninety-degree turn at what should have been the outer corner of the parking lot. "Hang on tight!" said Minnie, braking just enough for safety's sake before the train zoomed around the bend. The curve was smooth, but they were all pressed sharply to the left until the track straightened out again.

Most of the drones followed, but one didn't make the turn in time and went careening off into the color-spangled void. But instead of merely shrinking away with distance, or fading out of view as though being swallowed by a mist, the thing…disintegrated. Like a drop of ink in a bowl of water, it blurred around the edges before expanding into a cloud of constituent particles that spread out and became thinner and soon melded completely into the surrounding shimmer of hues.

"Oh, my goodness! Minnie, did you see that?" Daisy gasped.

"I'm a little busy driving," Minnie replied tensely. "Why, what happened?"

"One of those little robots missed the turn, and when it got too far away from the track, it just _dissolved_!"

"Hm," Minnie noted. "That gives me an idea. Hold on, everyone." With that, she floored the accelerator. They were on the portion of the track that ran straight along the full width of the parking lot, and the Monorail was free to reach its top speed of seventy miles per hour. The robots matched it after a brief moment, which surprised no one. But the next right turn loomed ahead.

"Minnie? Shouldn't we slow down a little?" asked Donald.

"Nope," the mouse replied. "Brace yourselves!"

The train whizzed around the bend, _throwing_ the passengers to the side. A few more machines sailed off into the sea of color and dissipated, but most of them avoided this fate by clinging to the Monorail with magnets or suction cups or powerful mechanical claws.

Now they were approaching the one other station on the Monorail's circuit, the drop-off for the Disneyland Hotel. The station hovered over and around the track, suspended in the shifting brilliance with no visible means of support…for the hotel itself was absent. This, however, was just one more oddity among all the strangeness, and they hardly noticed it for itself. Their attention was diverted by the robots on the outside of the train, several of which had begun trying to break _in_. From the windowpanes came a grinding squeal, not very loud but so penetrating that it set every tooth on edge, as the mechanical creatures applied steel blades to the glass.

Goofy, outrageously, _opened_ one of the windows in order to reach out and swat at the little automatons. "Stop it! Go away! Shoo!" he ordered them.

"_Goofy!_" Donald and Daisy bellowed in tandem. Donald grabbed the back of Goofy's vest and bodily hauled him back inside and away from the window, while Daisy closed it.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Daisy hissed at the surprised dog.

Before Goofy could respond, they were all shunted to the side again as the Monorail rounded the next corner. Now they were traveling in a broad easterly curve along what ought to have been Disneyland's southern border. Though practically on top of the park, still all they could see on the left side of the train was the same swirl of color…and the ominous shapes of the encroaching robots. One of them was slicing neatly through the glass with a barium-green laser beam.

"We gotta get rid of 'em _somehow_!" Goofy opined.

"Well, you won't do us any good by falling out the window!" Daisy pointed out. "You saw what happened to those things when they got too far away from the track; who knows what—"

She was interrupted by a _clink_ as the laser-wielding robot finished its job and a clean-edged circle of glass fell into the car. It was followed a moment later by the machine itself, which immediately targeted Daisy and the Rocket Crown still in her hands. She screamed as it sprang at her, grasping with its numerous mechanical limbs. In very short order, the others either discovered the hole in the window and used it or broke their own way in, and the cabin became a melee zone.

In some ways, the robots were _less_ aggressive than the sea creatures had been; they seemed bent on restraining or distracting the characters long enough to take the crown, rather than on doing them physical harm. But there were close to a dozen of them, all steel and moving parts, and in the confines of the Monorail car, it seemed inevitable that someone was going to get hurt.

The priorities were clear: protect the Rocket Crown, and protect the _driver_. Goofy took up the latter cause, situating himself right behind Minnie's seat and flailing wildly at any robots that came too near. The others had the significantly more difficult task of guarding the crown.

"Don't worry, Minnie! I gotcha covered!" Goofy crowed.

"What we need is—ow!—a weapon of some kind!" Daisy complained, ducking laser fire and yanking the crown out of the reach of a robot that got too close.

"Like what?" Donald asked, smacking away a flying automaton with his hat. Ironically, the emphasis on safety that had gone into the Monorail's design had left them without any object to pick up in self-defense. Except…Pluto, snapping at one of the drones as it flew around the car like an exceptionally large and well-armored housefly, bumped into the wall-mounted fire extinguisher and knocked it to the floor.

"Like that!" Daisy exclaimed, pointing, though Donald was already diving for it. He performed an awkward somersault as he hit the floor and came up already aiming the nozzle at the nearest of the robots. He sprayed the attacking machines with foaming chemicals until the device was empty, disabling several of them, then used the spent canister as a club to beat down the rest.

"Take _that_!" he said triumphantly, just before slipping in the flame-retardant froth and landing hard on his tail. It was at that point that the train reached the point of re-entry into Disneyland proper, and much to everyone's relief, the sea of shifting hues faded back into the familiar image of the park. Their relief didn't last long, however—now they were running parallel to the outbound track, less than ten feet away and still teeming with the robots that hadn't been able to keep up. Many of these took the opportunity to jump the gap and swarmed into the lead car as quickly as they could get to the cut and broken windowpanes. And now the ride was bumpier than ever as the train rocketed around the winding S-curves of the "sightseeing" portion of the track, and the slippery foam from the fire extinguisher made merely standing upright a tricky proposition, let alone fighting.

And as if all that weren't bad enough, there was a stir of activity at the Monorail station that proved, on closer examination, to be a much larger horde of robots getting into position to attack the train as it arrived. Some of them seemed to have taken a lesson from the sea creatures and combined their forms into bigger, more fearsomely armed machines. Even if they could handle the ones inside the cabin, the Monorail would be shredded right out from under them!

"What do we do?" Goofy whimpered.

"We'll have to bail out!" said Minnie. "On my signal, everyone jump!" She glared hard out of the bubble dome at the front of the car for a long moment, while the train swept through the northeastern quarter of Fantasyland, her hands hovering over the control panel. Then, just as it rounded the Matterhorn and the mountain's bulk obscured the station from view, she opened the doors on both sides and shouted, "_Now!_" and all five of them dove out of the speeding train. Driverless, the Monorail immediately powered down and coasted to a stop, coming to rest just as it reached the platform.

Sprawled on her back on the hard ground of the parade route, aching in at least nine different places, Minnie groaned and opened her eyes. What she saw was feet: the oversized, well broken-in shoes of Goofy, who had landed dangling over the edge of a tent awning near the Alice in Wonderland dark ride. Then she saw a large, friendly red tongue in the instant before Pluto hopefully licked her face. Despite herself, she giggled.

"Don't worry, Pluto. I'm all right," she said, heaving herself into a sitting position. "How about the rest of you? Is everyone okay?"

"Everything's fine up here!" Goofy said merrily before sliding the rest of the way off the awning and collapsing in a tangled heap.

Daisy came staggering over from the direction of the Alice in Wonderland dark ride, moaning melodramatically. "That," she emoted, "was the worst Monorail ride in the history of…of monorails!" She paused, looking around. "Where's Donald?"

A burst of infuriated quacking from somewhere in the middle distance, oddly muffled, answered her question. The four of them glanced about, scanning every part of the immediate area, before something caught their attention by tumbling down the lower slopes of the Matterhorn and crashing into the juniper hedges at the bottom.

They hurried over to investigate. A frightening specter rose out of the bushes, shaggy and green and making a great deal of raucous noise that was, fortunately, still muffled, because some of it was almost certainly swearing. Donald's webbed feet stuck out of the bottom of the snarl of evergreen branches—not only of the juniper, but also of alpine fir and blue spruce. There were even a few twigs of aspen stuck in the mess.

The rest of them had jumped out of the right side of the Monorail. Donald had, it seemed, jumped out of the left side, toward the Matterhorn…and hit every tree and shrub planted on its crags on the way down. With a burst of vocalization and a great wrench of his arms, he freed himself from the tangle of greenery, though the veneer of flame-retardant chemicals ensured that quite a few loose needles and leaves remaining sticking to him. He was a quite a sight, standing in the planter with his arms held rigidly away from his sides, snorting with indignation and speckled with plant matter.

"Donald?" Daisy asked cautiously. "Are you okay?"

Donald's posture sagged. "Oh…hi, Daisy," he said with a sheepish wave. Then he flopped over forward, the past couple of hours taking their toll at last.

"Gawrsh," Goofy observed.

* * *

The massed Dispirations swarmed the Monorail as it slid up to the station, hacking and slicing at its chromed shell…only to find that their targets were no longer on board. The only occupants of the train were a number of their own kin, which had entered the trailing cars just before Minnie had closed the doors at the beginning of the trek. These now wobbled out of the vehicle as though disoriented, wondering what to make of the experience they had just undergone.

They weren't conscious enough to realize it yet, but they had just discovered something of monumental importance.

* * *

The images were jumbled, illogical—castles and clocks and crowns, and a great black dragon arising to enclose them all in her grasping claws. Mickey knew on some level that he was dreaming, but he wasn't quite lucid enough to take command of the dream or wake up on his own.

"Mickey?"

"Who's there?" he said, in the dream.

"Mickey, wake up!"

Mickey opened his eyes. A huge dark blob in the center of his field of vision gradually resolved into the creased face of Walt Disney, gazing down at him with an expression that was both amused and bewildered.

"Walt?" Mickey mumbled.

"Mickey, what are you doing here?"

"Uh…catching forty winks?" Mickey guessed. A more detailed explanation would have to wait until he remembered just where "here" was. Mickey sat up, rubbing his eyes. His mind was unusually clear for having just woken up, and in rapid succession he recalled the Submarine Lagoon, the attacking creatures—Dispirations, they were called—Oswald, and then the fleeting impressions as he was dropped back into the real world. _I'm in Walt's apartment over the Firehouse_, he realized.

"Forty winks," Walt repeated, sighing. "Mickey, I don't mind if you drop in up here for a nap once in a while, but I wish you'd ask me first. I was planning to have a snooze myself."

"Sorry," Mickey chuckled guiltily, his eyes coming to rest on Walt's wry face. Suddenly he gasped, feeling like the bed was dropping out from under him. Because all at once, it hit him: it was 1965. From Mickey's perspective, Walt had aged ten years overnight…and was nearing the end of his life. This was it—his last chance to take advantage of the gift Maleficent had accidentally given him when she turned time back in the park.

"Is something wrong?" asked Walt, just as he had asked back in 1955, when his appearance on the _Mark Twain_ had shocked Mickey. He probably didn't even remember asking back then; it was ten years ago to him.

"K-kind of," Mickey replied.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Mickey opened his mouth to refuse, but immediately thought better of it. "Yes," he said. "I do." He paused for three instants, took a deep breath, and told Walt exactly what was going on. Every bit. It didn't take him as long as he anticipated.

When he finished, Walt was silent for a long moment. Then he said, in perfect seriousness, "Mickey, are you pulling my leg?"

"No!" Mickey replied, taken aback. "It's all true! I know it's far-fetched, but you gotta believe me!"

"I do believe you, Mickey. If nothing else, what you just told me is too crazy to be made up. I can't figure out what to let sink in first." He looked pensively pleased.

Mickey settled down. "You're not as upset as I thought you'd be."

"Upset? Why would I be upset? I now know that my park is going to last for at least forty more years, getting bigger and better as it goes." He raised a hand to stop Mickey's forming protest before it could start. "I know you'll get this thing with Maleficent sorted out. I have every confidence in you."

"And what about the other stuff? You know, the stuff about…you…personally?"

Walt smiled until his eyes were almost lost amid the crows' feet. "None of us lasts forever, Mickey…except you, maybe. No one can say I haven't left my mark. This place, and you and everyone else in the Disney Family—you're my immortality. I don't need the other kind. It would be nice to get to _see_ it all, of course, but I have no regrets." He set a comforting hand on Mickey's shoulder. "Now why don't you get back out there and save the magic. I'm still waiting to use that bed, you know."

Mickey found that he was smiling despite himself. Walt Disney was one of those people whose every mood was infectious. "You got it, old pal," he said. Reinvigorated, he sprang up off the bed and started for the exit.

"Oh, Mickey!" Walt called after him. "One more thing, if you don't mind."

"What is it, Walt?"

"If you're from the 21st Century, you'll be able to tell me…how close were we? With Tomorrowland, I mean."

Mickey grinned. "Honestly? We were way off."

Walt made a thoughtful frown, nodding in understanding. "It's a good thing we've got that remodel coming up, then. Anyway, I'll see you around. Go make me proud."

To Be Continued…

_A/N: First of all, a huge apology from me for taking so long to post this chapter. I blame mild writer's block. And a persistent bug between my ears that forced me to work on my _Avatar_ fanfic "Excerpts From the Diary of Princess Ursa" instead. And the holiday season. And life in general. But here it is! I hope, once again, that it was worth the wait._

_In a stunningly pathetic attempt to make up for my tardiness, here's a little something extra: a rundown of my inspirations and information sources in writing this fanfic._

_For starters, _**Disneyland itself**_ has been my first and foremost source of inspiration. Obviously, I wouldn't have imagined or started writing this story in the first place if I didn't have a lifelong love of the park! Even now, with an Annual Pass that allows me to visit at least once a month, I discover something new about the place every time I go. Disneyland's capacity to surprise me, even after all these years and even with as much as I already know about it, constitutes magic in the purest sense of the word._

**Mickey's Mouseworks**_ and_ **Mickey's House of Mouse,**_ and to a lesser extent other recent productions starring the Sensational Six, have been instrumental in providing me with their "modern" personalities and mannerisms. Mickey Mouse is timeless, but far from static—his character has evolved in little ways over the decades, and I wanted him and his pals to be up to date._

_The _**Kingdom Hearts**_ video game series was another huge inspiration for characterization. I think I can safely say that this franchise has revitalized the Disney canon for the current crop of teens and twenty-somethings, and reminded us all that Mickey is more than just America's Nice Guy—he has the potential to be a true dramatic action hero as well! As well, some people have said the Dispirations remind them of the Heartless. There are only so many ways of portraying hordes of mindless evil minions, so some similarities were inevitable…but I'd be lying if I said the resemblance was entirely coincidental! On a more general note, the epic scope of the story and overall mood of adventure can be traced to my impressions of KH. After all, I did originally envision the fic as a premise for a Disneyland-based video game. The soundtracks for _Kingdom Hearts_ and _Kingdom Hearts II_ are my music of choice when it comes to setting the mood for writing action sequences and big flowery descriptions of mystical phenomena._

**Terry Pratchett**_ is one of my favorite authors, and I have tried to evoke something of his style in crafting a plotline where there's a lot more going on than meets the eye at first and every detail matters and all the separate themes and threads tie together by the end. I've also tried to tap into his unique brand of verbal humor in a few places, but Disneyland isn't the Discworld and it's usually harder to make such humor fit than it's worth._

_The books of _**David Koenig**_ are an invaluable resource for any die-hard fan of Disneyland who wants to see what lies behind the magic. He has three Disney books out: _Mouse Tales, More Mouse Tales,_ and _Mouse Under Glass_. The last one focuses on Disney's animated movies, but there are tidbits about the theme parks in there too. All three books are objective, no-nonsense examinations of the Disney empire by a fan who truly loves the product, warts and all._

**Disneyland Then, Now, and Forever**_ is another fabulous book for the Disney researcher. Produced for the 50__th__ Anniversary, it is a celebration of the history and evolution of the park, complete with gobs of photos that I doubt I could have done without in portraying the Disneyland of the past. Speaking of photos, the most recent edition of _**The Disneyland Detective**_ by Kendra Trahan includes some absolutely spectacular full-color photos of the five crowns, for those of you who weren't able to see them in person._

_The _**Disney Dossiers**_ are another source I use for characterization. This very new book contains "files" on dozens of well-known—and not so well-known—Disney characters, grouped along themes such as "Royalty," "Nice Cats" (contrasted with "Nasty Cats") and "Extra-Evil Villains." It's given me a few ideas for character cameos to include, and generally helped me sort out this huge Disney crossover situation I've created._

_Finally, I've used the satellite photos at _**GoogleMaps** _to get a bird's-eye view of Disneyland whenever I've needed one—such as when trying to remember exactly how the Monorail track is laid out._

_Thanks for being so patient, readers! I love you all!_

—_Karalora_


	14. Chapter 14

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 14: All Together Now

It was not the first time Mickey had walked the length of Main Street without another living soul in sight. He had often done so after closing, with the bustle of the day still making itself known in the scent of popcorn lingering on the evening breeze and in the discarded park maps that gathered around the bases of the antique gas lamps. Or else in the twilit hours before the morning shift arrived to prepare for Disneyland's opening, when the air was still and cool and the dew was heavy on the shrubbery, and there was not a sound to break the expectant silence save for the distant twittering of a flock of early-rising sparrows.

Needless to say, he'd never done it in broad daylight. Open or closed, Main Street had never been _empty_ between sunrise and sunset. There were always maintenance workers replacing light bulbs. Or gardeners pruning hedges. Or Imagineers and management types evaluating the present and planning for the future. For the boulevard to be so completely devoid of activity was simply _wrong_, on a fundamental level—it was meant to be Everytown, not a ghost town!

He might have felt better picking up his pace, the sooner to reach the end of the eerie avenue. But his mind was swamped with thoughts, leaving no brainpower to spare for things like choosing a walking speed. His legs were on autopilot, moving at the friendly amble he usually favored.

Where to go from here? He kept coming up blank. Reuniting with the rest of the Sensational Six was a priority, of course, but he couldn't determine whether it would be more sensible to go looking for them, or to wait at Central Plaza for them to find him. He was taking to heart Oswald's assertion that they could manage without him for a little while, but he still hated to think that they might be in trouble while he twiddled his thumbs. He should at least, he decided, go back to the last place he had seen them—or as near to it as he could manage—and wait, if wait he must, a little closer to the likely site of the action. He bore right as he approached Central Plaza, veering toward the Tomorrowland entrance.

An enormous pile of books and loose papers and vaguely scientific-looking instruments was shuffling toward him on a pair of webbed feet. "Professor von Drake?" Mickey asked.

A book standing, against all odds, upright on the front of the heap swung gently outward like a door turning on a hinge, and Ludwig von Drake stuck his tousled head through the resultant opening. "Oh, there you are, Mickey! I been lookin' all over the place for you! You not gonna _believe_ all the stuff I been findin' out!"

"Any chance it can wait a couple of hours?" asked Mickey, but von Drake was prattling on.

"I thought it was just time and space that was gettin' all twisted around by Maleficent's magical hijinks, but it turns out there's a lot more goin' on! Now, you gonna have to sit down for a while, 'cause this is gonna get technical…" He dropped the items he was carrying and rummaged a slide projector and screen out of the mess, and in a matter of seconds, Mickey found himself sitting on a folding chair while von Drake stabbed at complex diagrams with an academic pointer and strung incomprehensible polysyllables together by the dozen.

"Say, Professor," said Mickey conversationally, "you know who would find all this _really_ fascinating?"

"NO INTERRUPTING THE LECTURER!!!" the duck bellowed, whirling around suddenly and hurling a blackboard eraser with such force that it singed Mickey's head fur as he barely dodged it. "How many times I gotta tell you kids…" He stopped, blinked, and chuckled. "Whoops! Sorry about that there, Mickey; I thought I was back at the university for a second over here. You were saying…?"

"I was saying, you know who would be better to explain all this to than me?"

"No, who?"

"Merlin! I've been having him do research into the magical side of all this in his library. If the two of you put your heads together, you should have this situation completely analyzed in no time!"

Von Drake's face contorted with outrage. "Merlin? _Merlin?!_" he sneered. "Are you _nuts_? Putting important research in the hands of that pointy-hatted magical kook? You need a _scientific_ mind for that kind of work!"

Mickey kept studiously silent throughout the rant. Merlin was every bit as scientifically minded as Ludwig von Drake—in some respects more so, in fact—but the Professor had little patience for magic as a rule, since he couldn't further his understanding of it by dissecting it under a microscope. Science thrives on details, on careful, rigidly analytical control…but magic follows nebulous generalities and defies strict categorization.

"Put our heads together," von Drake continued in a disgusted tone. "Absotively not! Under no circumstances will I work with no crazy silly hoity-toity magic wizard sorcerer guy!"

"Are you sure?" said Mickey. "I mean, I can understand if you don't think you can add anything useful to what he's already done, but…"

"Anything _useful_?" von Drake practically exploded. "Well, what do you think all this _is_ over here?" He gestured emphatically with the pointer at his books and things. "You know what I'm gonna do? I'll tell you what I'm gonna do! I'm gonna march right in there and give that Merlin a piece of my magnificent mind, that's what I'm gonna do! I'll show _him_ what's useful!" And with that, he swept up his paraphernalia and marched off toward Fantasyland, papers escaping from the armload every few steps.

Mickey blew a sigh of relief. Professor von Drake was eccentric as all get-out, but also genuinely brilliant, and with that kind of person, there is always the risk that they will see right through reverse psychology.

Suddenly it occurred to him that the nutty academician wasn't the only one with valuable information concerning the park's crisis. Indecision had his head swinging between Sleeping Beauty Castle and the Tomorrowland gate for a moment before he made up his mind: much as it pained him to leave his nearest and dearest hanging as to his fate after the undersea attack, getting all the pieces of the puzzle together had to come first. He followed the trail of fugitive documents, picking them up as he went in case they were important. Any presentation of the Professor's inevitably included more unnecessary tangents than relevant material, but you never knew which was which just by looking at them.

As he was stooping to collect the last of the dropped papers, he heard approaching voices from the vicinity of the Alice in Wonderland ride. He straightened up and looked in the direction of the sound…and his eyes ran smack into Minnie's.

* * *

Minnie felt the ground drop out from under her feet—not because she was falling, but because she was _flying_. The joy was so sudden and so profound that it was almost indistinguishable from terror, which also shortens the breath and speeds the heart.

She never should have doubted him.

"…Mickey?…" she half-whispered, even though she _knew_, without testing, that it was really him. It was just one of those things you were supposed to say in a situation like this.

"Hi, Minnie, fellas," Mickey said as though nothing much was wrong. But then, for him it wasn't. Because _he_ hadn't spent the past few hours uncertain as to whether he was even alive. An irritated fury rose in Minnie, but it was mixed with so much relief and elation and humor and sheer love that by the time it came out, it did so in the form of her running across the yards that separated them and flinging herself at Mickey with a laughing sob.

"_I was so afraid I'd never see you again!_" she wailed.

Mickey chuckled—he _chuckled_—and said, "Aw, shucks, Minnie. You know I'll always come back to ya. No matter what." He returned her embrace, murmured, "I missed you too," and she hugged him harder and doused him with kisses.

"See, Minnie? I _told_ you," said Daisy.

"Hey, Mickey, save some of that for me!" said Goofy, lumbering forward and encircling both mice in his long arms. Within seconds, Mickey was at the center of a ferociously exuberant group hug, contending with not only more arms than there was room for around his torso, but Donald's knuckles on the crown of his head, Pluto's slobbering tongue on his face, and Goofy's big clumsy feet pretty much everywhere.

"Okay, fellas, settle down," said Mickey after several minutes of this. "I'm glad to see all of you too, but I was on my way to Merlin's library to tell him and Professor von Drake some important stuff I found out about Inpotentia." He stooped to retrieve the papers, which he had dropped when Minnie rushed him. "Of course, you're welcome to come with me…"

"You bet we are!" said Donald. "We're not letting you out of our sight again!"

"We've got things to tell too," Daisy added.

Mickey started, nearly dropping the papers again. "Oh my gosh! The Rocket Crown! Do you have it?"

Minnie's spirits, so quickly raised upon reuniting with Mickey, dropped again just as quickly. "Oh, _no_…" she moaned. "I think we left it on the Monorail!"

"No we didn't!" said Goofy brightly. "I grabbed it just before we bailed out!" He started patting his pockets. "And then I put it…uh…nope, that's my wallet…well, shucks, I must have it around here somewhere…"

"Maybe it fell out when we landed," Daisy suggested. "Donald and I will go check." She grabbed her boyfriend's hand and unceremoniously hauled him back toward the Matterhorn.

Mickey sighed. "Bailed out of the Monorail, huh? Sounds like you guys have been up to some crazy stuff without me."

"It's a long story," said Minnie. "I should probably save it for the library, since we're going there anyway."

There was a pause, during which Mickey stroked Pluto's head and Goofy, in his search for the Rocket Crown that he still hadn't ruled out being on his person, resorted to removing his shoes and peering into them.

"Mickey, did you _really_ tell Merlin and Ludwig von Drake to work together? You know they don't get along."

"Desperate times, Minnie," Mickey said airily.

Donald and Daisy returned at that point, Daisy waving the crown and beaming. "Got it! It was on top of the awning where Goofy landed." How the petite duck had been able to reach that high was evident in the irritated scowl on Donald's face…and the imprint of a high-heeled pump on his forehead.

"That's a relief," said Minnie. "It's a good thing you found it before those little robots did."

"Little robots?" Mickey repeated.

"You'll find out soon enough," said Minnie. "Let's go."

* * *

The entrance to Merlin's library was located in the Fantasyland courtyard, appropriately in the vicinity of King Arthur's Carrousel. Where the library itself was located, Mickey had no idea, because getting there involved traveling under the pavement, down a straight hallway with no detectable grade, and then arriving at a largish, book-filled room with a picture window that overlooked rolling pastureland from a height of about four stories. In addition to the obvious books and scrolls, the library contained alchemical equipment that saw almost constant use, occult items from around the world that were _never_ used (at least by Merlin), and a small pot-bellied stove whose primary function was heating water for tea.

When the Sensational Six got there, it also contained a ferocious row, the Battle of the Century between Magic and Science. At first, Mickey couldn't make out the words, but after listening for a moment, he realized that there _were_ no words, not if you accepted that the purpose of words was to convey ideas. In the few minutes between Professor von Drake's arrival and that of the Six, the argument had started, escalated, and degenerated into something that was no longer even a pretense of honest communication. The two smartest, wisest, most educated members of the Disney Family were hurling insults at each other. They sounded like kindergarteners who had somehow gotten hold of a thesaurus.

"Mountebank!"

"Automaton!"

"Fluff-brained fairy-tale freak!"

"Conceited, cantankerous, collegiate crumbwit! Ha! That's _four_ alliterative terms in a row, sir!"

Thus went the battle between Magic and Science. On his perch in one corner of the room, Common Sense sighed more deeply and rolled his eyes more severely with every exchange. Mickey got the distinct impression that Archimedes had already tried to talk the two scholars out of their spat, and given up.

"Oh, Uncle Ludwig," Donald muttered.

There was something else alive in the library. Pluto, performing a routine sniff of the premises, suddenly took alarm and retreated to a safe position behind Mickey's legs. A moment later, the thing he had discovered scampered out of its hiding place and sauntered over to investigate the newcomers, making a cooing noise.

The creature was cat-sized and approximately fox-shaped, with dark blue-grey fur covering most of its body. Its front legs, though, were scaly. And it had wings. It looked a bit like one of the less ugly sorts of gargoyles, or like something that might eventually result if a grey fox and a blue miniature dragon fell in love. It glanced up at Mickey with pale, friendly eyes and cooed again, then reared up on its hind paws, and suddenly the image was overwhelmingly of a mishmash monster from a heraldic shield. But cute.

"Well, hi there, little fella," said Mickey, patting the animal on the head. "Where did you come from?" Pluto whined uncertainly.

Near-silence fell in the library as the feuding sages took notice of the new arrivals and realized in whose presence they had been bickering. "Oh, good heavens," Merlin breathed.

"There, you see?" said Archimedes, flying over to a table near the door. "I told you you'd end up making fools of yourselves."

"I am dreadfully sorry you, er, had to see that," said Merlin. "And I'm certain Professor von Drake agrees with me on _that_ point, at least." Von Drake nodded vigorously, so profoundly chagrinned that he was, for once, speechless.

"Who's this little guy, Merlin?" asked Daisy. "He's awful cute."

"Oh, I see you've met Hypatia," the wizard replied. "Actually, Daisy, he is, in fact, a she—at least all, er, readily observable aspects point in that direction."

"How long have you had her?" asked Mickey.

"I don't recall exactly, but let's call it…oh, four and a half hours. The Good Fairies found her wandering about and brought her to me for study. All I have been able to ascertain so far, however, is that she's a very talented shapeshifter. She wasn't half so charming as this when they brought her here; looked rather like some sort of abyssal crustacean."

"A deep-sea lobster," Archimedes translated.

"Yes, thank you, Archimedes."

"Wait a minute," Minnie interjected. "Did you just say that four hours ago, this—she—Hypatia—looked like a _lobster_?"

"Four and a half hours ago, actually, but yes. As I recall, Archimedes was a bit skeptical about what use such a creature could be to Maleficent. That was before she started changing shape, you see."

"She's a Dispiration!" Mickey announced.

"A what?" von Drake scoffed from the background, where he was setting up his slide projector. "Now who's making up words to confuse everybody over there?"

"A Dispiration," Mickey repeated more calmly. "That's what I came here to tell you. Maleficent _is_ using them as her servants, and there are a lot more where this one came from." He shuddered, driving down memories of slashing claws and lashing tentacles. "They attacked me…I was lucky to get away. You shouldn't let her run loose in here!"

Merlin shrugged. "She's been perfectly well behaved ever since she arrived. I was beginning to think the Good Fairies were wrong after all about her being under Maleficent's control."

The Sensational Six exchanged doubtful looks, unsure how to respond to that. "It must be a trick" came to mind, but it rang false in consideration of Merlin's wisdom and perceptiveness. It was Goofy who came up with: "But why would a servant of Maleficent's suddenly come across all friendly-like?"

"Now that I can't say," said Merlin. "I can only speculate that she's taken a liking to me for some reason…and to all of you, it seems. But why don't you have some seats and tell, er, Professor von Drake and myself more about these Dispirations? I'll put on some tea. Blacky, take notes." As the Six settled into various hard-backed chairs, a broad easel-mounted chalkboard leaning against the wall sprang to attention, several pieces of chalk leaping off the tray and hovering in midair, poised to write.

"I guess I'll start," said Mickey, and he cleared his throat and began recounting what had happened to him since his undersea ordeal. At first, he stumbled over his words, distracted by the sight of the chalk sticks wagging about with no visible means of support—to say nothing of the frequent gasps of astonishment from his audience—but he soon got used to both. Von Drake was taking notes also, scribbling furiously on two clipboards at a time _and_ running a tape recorder.

"Most fascinating!" Merlin said when Mickey had finished. "To think that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is still in some sense a force to be reckoned with."

"I can't believe you actually went to Inpotentia and didn't hate it," said Daisy.

"It's an unpredictable place…or whatever it is," said Mickey. "Well, it's you guys' turn. What happened to you after we got separated?"

They told the story piecemeal, different members of the group chiming in with tidbits as things came up. Mickey listened with disturbed fascination to his friends' description of the sea of swirling colors that held sway outside the park, dissolving anything that drifted too far out into it. He cringed at their account of the methodical persistence with which the robotic Dispirations attacked them, so unlike the savagery that had typified them when they were sea creatures—no wonder Pluto was so wary of Merlin's little fox-dragon, for all its apparent affability. He must have smelled out what she was right away.

"Excellent, excellent. I must thank you all," said Merlin as the recap came to a close. "This information shall be most helpful in analyzing the situation—what say you, Professor?"

Von Drake chortled merrily. "Helpful? It's better than helpful, you crazy old conjurer—it proves my theory is correct!" He whooped with excitement and began digging through his pile of books and scientific instruments. "Just you kids stick around while I crunch a few numbers, and I'll have a minutely detailed and completely accurate theoretical model for you, and then we can—" Something on his person buzzed, and he broke off and removed a small timepiece from his pocket. "Oh, would you look at that? It's lunchtime." Changing gears instantaneously, the Professor sat down on a handy stack of tomes, whipped out a hero sandwich, and began chewing away without another word, leaving the Sensational Six feeling somewhere between bowled over and brushed aside.

Merlin was a little flustered himself. "I suppose we could all do with a short break," he said.

"Not me," Mickey averred. "I just came off a long one. Come to think of it, I should get the Rocket Crown over to the Castle A.S.A.P."

"I'll come with you," said Minnie. "I agree with Donald about not letting you out of our sight."

Mickey chuckled. "Sounds fair. How about the rest of you?"

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I definitely want to see this," said Daisy. "As you may recall, I missed it the first time."

"We'll all go!" Goofy said brightly. "We're a team, ain't we?"

"I just hope jumping ahead in time ten years doesn't interfere with your research," said Mickey.

"If it does, we shall certainly adapt," Merlin assured him, escorting them to the exit. "And speaking of adaptation, I urge you not to worry about Hypatia. Even if she was a servant of Maleficent's at one point, she doesn't appear to be any longer. I have seen no evidence that she retains any evil tendencies at all."

"You'd better be right, you crazy old codger," Donald muttered.

* * *

For the event itself, they actually were two "teams." Daisy wanted to watch the placement of the Rocket Crown from the ground, where she could stand back far enough not to have to crane her neck, and she possessively insisted Donald stand there with her. Goofy gave up on trooping up to the Castle roof the first time he tripped over his feet in the confined space of the walk-through attraction and bounced down half a flight of stairs.

That left Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto to make the trek past the dioramas telling the story of Sleeping Beauty. At one point, Pluto paused to snort scornfully at a miniature figure of Maleficent threatening King Stefan's court. As they ascended, Mickey's pace slowed.

"You're not getting _tired_, are you?" Minnie ribbed him. "I thought you said you just came off a long break."

Mickey stopped altogether and sat down on the stairs. "It's not that," he said distantly. "It's…I didn't mention this before, but…I saw Walt again."

Minnie sobered instantly. "Oh. I see." She sat beside her boyfriend. Pluto made a supportive gesture of his own, lying down and resting his chin on Mickey's shoes.

"He looked so _old_," Mickey continued. "And it made me realize that, after this, he'll be gone again, and…maybe we should wait, spend some more time with him first, before we move ahead to 1975."

"Part of me wants to say that's a good idea," said Minnie, "but most of me knows better. If Professor von Drake is right about Disneyland disconnecting from reality—and I don't doubt it after riding the Monorail outside and seeing that outside isn't even there—then we have to stop it while we can. Otherwise, we're playing right into Maleficent's hands."

"I know," said Mickey with a sigh. "That doesn't mean I have to like it. Thanks for listening."

She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You're welcome."

They continued up the stairs and finally emerged on the main balcony of the Castle, between the two towers flanking the drawbridge. To their right, the Mouseketeer Crown sparkled reassuringly. In Central Plaza below, Daisy hollered and waved. Minnie waved back.

Mickey turned to face the tallest tower, around which the Rocket Crown belonged, and sized it up, extending his thumb and squinting along his arm. He brought out the crown and turned it over in his hands, carefully planning the force and angle of his toss. The sensation of urgency, of years demanding to be freed, though less intense than it had been in the Mouseketeer Crown, was still present, and distracting. But at the same time, it was encouraging. As before, the crown suddenly seemed to grow feather-light, and Mickey released it, and it rose up through the air in a steep parabolic arc and settled over the spire.

To Be Continued…

_A/N: Once again, I must offer a sincere apology for the lateness of this update. I blame all the usual suspects: writer's block, distractions from other writing projects, the general busy-ness of life. To make matters worse, I don't even like this chapter all that much. But we got the reunion scene out of it, at least, and I can console myself with the fact that there's lots of fun stuff coming up in the next few chapters. If things go as planned, you can expect more humor and light-heartedness to balance out the gut-wrenching drama I've been perpetrating in these past few chapters. The second half of the 1960's saw the debut of some of the most famous—and infamous—rides ever to be installed at Disneyland, and I intend to play around with them._

_Again, thanks for your patience while I slowly ground this chapter out. I will make every effort to make the next update quicker, I promise._

_—Karalora_


	15. Chapter 15

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 15: Changes of Pace

Disney villains are fond of melodrama and thrive on instantly recognizable tropes of villainy that border on cliché. Thus, the place where they gathered when plotting as a group—a rare occurrence, since one of the defining traits of evil is an aversion to cooperation rooted in pure selfishness—was decked out with black and purple draperies, wrought-iron candelabras, furniture with legs carved to resemble clawed animal feet, and a certain skull motif in the stonework. They almost couldn't help themselves—by their standards, it was high fashion!

Most of their standards, anyway. Someone with a very different, very _definite_ view on what constituted high fashion currently held the floor, and her low opinion of the décor crept into her voice and gestures in little ways. It didn't stop her, however, from using one of the candles to light her cigarette before she started speaking.

"Order, order," Cruella De Vil said vaguely, barely audible over the general chatter in the room. She raised her voice. "Pipe down while I'm talking, you _idiots_!"

"Maybe I'd better handle this," said Madam Mim from the sidelines.

"You?" Cruella scoffed. "Of course not, darling, you've got no style at all. But I could use something breakable to throw."

Mim searched the pockets of her fuchsia skirt and came up with a cracked teacup. "I have this," she offered.

"It'll do, I suppose," said Cruella, taking the cup. Then she bellowed, "I told you imbeciles to be QUIET!" and hurled the cup full-force at the opposite wall, timing the operation so that the nerve-rattling explosion of cheap china occurred in tandem with the final shouted word. It did the trick—the assembled villains stopped their various conversations dead and gave Cruella their full attention. "That's better," she said.

"You're probably wondering why I've called you all here today. Make no mistake—I don't like any of you any more than you like me. But just at the moment, I like that _wretched_ Maleficent even less. You've all gathered what she's been up to, I hope."

"Aye," Captain Hook confirmed, swirling his brandy glass. "Turning back time all the way to 1955…though to what purpose, I can't imagine."

"Do you really think it's worth fussing over, Cruella?" asked Lady Tremaine. "After all, your presence would seem to indicate that the spell is already wearing off."

"That's not the point, darling," said Cruella with a flourish of her arms that sent tobacco embers flying. "The point is, that dratted fairy defied the Arrangement and went over all our heads. We—"

"Pish-tush to the Arrangement, I say!" J. Worthington Foulfellow interrupted airily. "Isn't it more of a formality than anything else? So we don't, as it were, step on one another's toes in our…activities?"

"Pre-cisely!" Madam Mim cut in, marching out to share the stage with Cruella. "Frankly, I'm surprised I can walk, Maleficent's stomped on _my_ feet so hard. Do you know where Cruella and I _were_ until the spell started wearing off? Nowhere, that's where! We didn't exist, and we _knew_ it! It was worse than sunshine and daisies!"

A low murmur spread through the room, occasionally rising to intelligibility with phrases like "no respect" and "might have been anyone." None of the audience members cared, as such, what happened to Mim and Cruella—or anyone other than their own selves, usually—but allowing Maleficent's latest scheme to run unchecked when she was doing wrong by her fellow villains would be setting a dangerous precedent. It was, indeed, contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the Arrangement. The general thrust of the mutterings gradually shifted to "won't stand for this" and "ought to show her."

"It's working, Cruella…" Mim crooned under her breath, teeth clenched in a showy grin.

Cruella took a long drag on her cigarette before replying. "Maybe a little too well. Time to take back control." She spoke up. "There, see? Not quite so inconsequential, is it?" Her question wasn't directed particularly at Lady Tremaine, but the matronly aristocrat took it as such.

"Have out with it, woman: what do you propose we do?"

"Do?" Cruella repeated innocently. "That's what we're all here to decide, darling! This is a brainstorming session!" She gesticulated wildly as she spoke, flinging clumps of cigarette ash hazardously about the room.

The reaction to this announcement was mixed at best. Mim and Cruella having brought the ramifications of Maleficent's scheme to their attention was one thing; following this up with a demand that _they_ all figure out what to do about it was an altogether different animal. Inevitably, the point came up again that the spell was wearing off on its own, so why, really, should any of them bother to do anything? The debate began to get loud and nasty, even for Disney villains, until something happened to stop it cold.

"The spell is _not_ wearing off on its own," said a smooth, quiet voice from a shadowed corner of the room. Subdued though it was, that voice had the power to cut through the noise, silencing them all. Every head turned toward the corner, where glass green eyes flashed from the paleness of a severely beautiful face.

The Wicked Queen was the first of them all, and in many ways remained the _worst_ of them all, the most imposing in a collection of infamously imposing personalities. It wasn't just that she was precise in her deadliness and absolutely uncompromising in her evil—the majesty of her bearing had yet to be matched by any of her successors. She knew not only how to wield power but how _not_ to wield it, how to turn the world on a coolly delivered word, dispensing with the need for a lot of messy _activity._ They all looked up to her—this, combined with the rarity of her participation in the group affairs of the villains, secured her their undivided attention whenever she did deign to involve herself.

For a moment, an uneasy calm, electric with anticipation, filled the chamber. Then the Queen, satisfied that all eyes and ears were upon her, continued.

"It is being dismantled. Someone is deliberately undoing it, in stages."

"Are you sure?" blurted Mim, the only other magician present. "Never mind, of course you are. Any idea who's doing it?"

"Who else?" said the Queen enigmatically. "There is only one who possesses the motivation to make the attempt, the drive to persevere, _and_ the power to succeed."

Understanding bloomed in the room like spots of ink spreading on a white cloth. The scattered mutterings began anew, but this time, only one phrase dominated: Mickey Mouse.

"Yes," the Queen said simply, and lapsed into regal silence again.

The others fell silent also, but it was more of an awkward, befuddled silence, punctuated by exchanged glances.

Captain Hook was the first to speak. "This complicates matters considerably. Regardless of our actions—or _in_actions—we're likely to end up taking one side or the other, even if only by default. I don't know about the rest of you, but I would find that _insufferably_ galling."

There was a general buzz of assent. No one wanted to let Maleficent get away, as such, with her outrageous breach of inter-villain protocol, but the very thought of siding with that goody-two-shoes mouse, even passively, was revolting. Not every ethical dilemma stems from a desire to avoid doing the _wrong_ thing.

Lady Tremaine spoke again, addressing the Wicked Queen. "Your Majesty, do you have _confirmation_ that Mickey Mouse is undoing the spell, or is it merely reasoned speculation?"

"Our certainty in the matter is not to be questioned," the haughty monarch replied coolly. "He has already reversed one part of the spell." She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, as though extending her senses into some unseen dimension of space and time. "And he is about to do so again."

Some of the other villains scanned the air nervously.

* * *

It was the same sensation again—the feeling that the entire universe was zooming past in all directions, the crystalline singing of accelerated time. And this time, someone was there to experience it with him. Minnie clutched at Mickey's arm, gasping in astonishment. He gave her a reassuring smile and motioned for her to watch the wonders emerge. 

Like a scene from a children's pop-up book, the façade of "it's a small world," with its dazzling gold-leafed accents and famous clock face, spread to its full height and breadth along the northern border of Fantasyland. To the southwest, a spray of Mardi Gras confetti heralded the debut of New Orleans Square, with its fine dining, high-class shopping, and extraordinary atmosphere.

But not all the changes were good. Shortly after the opening of New Orleans Square, there was a moment as unsettling as it was brief, when the sky darkened and a strange, eerie sound, like storm wind moaning through a hollow tree, seemed to emanate from the land itself, rising gradually in both volume and pitch before dying away. The realization of what that wailing sound represented was like a dose of lead in Mickey's veins. He had known this moment would come, but he hadn't expected it to be played out so literally: the park, the very _park_, was mourning Walt's passing.

He was surprised by how little it actually hurt. If he had somehow been gifted with the foreknowledge that he would have to hear Disneyland itself scream in anguish over its creator's death, he would have expected something, well, a little more soul-searing. But he felt only a fleeting chill of heaviness before the moment passed and the sky lightened again to blue, leaving him blinking away a mere film of tears.

Anyway, there wasn't time to be too upset, as the growth of the park continued unabated. The unfurling of a Jolly Roger from a prominent domed building in New Orleans Square marked the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean. This was followed by a frenzy of change in Tomorrowland—the Carousel of Progress rising out of the ground, already spinning, rows of pylons springing up to catch the PeopleMover track as it unrolled itself in lazy curves, the Rocket Jets, Tomorrowland Terrace, Adventure Thru InnerSpace…the fruits of a wholesale re-conceptualization of the area.

After that, the focus shifted back to the southwestern corner of the park as the second of the beloved New Orleans Square attractions, the Haunted Mansion, coalesced out of black mist in its fenced-off corner. A thick pine forest grew in Frontierland's Indian Village, displacing the wigwams and longhouses and sculpting the landscape into the hills and caves of Bear Country. Some of the trees then toppled in a curiously orderly fashion, stacking themselves into log-built lodges to house the new land's handful of attractions.

The transformation wound down after that; the mid-Seventies had been a slow period for the park's growth, sandwiched between the joyous innovation of the late Sixties and the roller coaster fever that hit Disneyland in the late Seventies. When the flow of time returned to normal, it was more like gently gliding to a stop than like the slam on the brakes it had been after the first jump forward.

Even so, Minnie looked pretty unnerved. "Oh…" she whimpered. "I never realized…" She trailed off, trembling. Pluto nosed her comfortingly.

"Realized what, Minnie?" Mickey prompted.

"That awful sound…it was the park, wasn't it? Crying for Walt."

"Yeah, I think it was," Mickey agreed wistfully. "It really makes you think, doesn't it? It's almost like Disneyland is _alive_." He let out a tiny chuckle. "I've wondered about that before, but I never really thought about what it would mean."

"I'll be happy when I manage to _stop_ thinking about it," Minnie said dryly. "Let's go back down now."

They turned back toward the access door.

There was a pillar of green fire, and a sliver of darkness into the air that opened up into the tall, angular figure of Maleficent.

"Ah, Mickey. Still plugging away at your heroic quest, I see," she said evenly. "I don't know whether to be impressed or disappointed, but I do know that your persistence has now outlived its usefulness."

Pluto and Minnie sprang into instant action, the former bristling like a wild wolf and emitting the most threatening growl he could muster, the latter interposing herself between Mickey and the mocking Wicked Fairy, arms spread protectively. "Back off, Maleficent!" she yelled. "You're not taking him away from me again, you…you-you-you _hag_!"

"My _word_," Maleficent breathed, lips turning up. "Such harsh language. I never would have expected it of you, Minnie. But then, I never would have thought Mickey Mouse capable of _murdering_ his beloved creator…there are surprises around every corner, are there not?"

"_Murder?!_" Mickey choked out. "Are you _insane_?"

"Walt Disney was alive. Because of your actions, he no longer is. Fairly damning circumstances, in my opinion."

Mickey felt the Castle parapet drop out from underneath him. The sky was tilting crazily, and a crescendo of white noise was filling up his awareness. _It doesn't mean anything; she's just trying to get my goat,_ he thought. But the guilt was creeping up his spine all the same, poking at his insides with sharpened fingernails: _She'll never convince me I'm a murderer. I know I did the right thing by moving forward…but maybe I _should_ have waited, taken the chance to spend some more time with Walt._

Then another, more confident voice spoke up in the back of his head. Funny, it sounded kind of like Oswald. _Who are you kidding, Mickey? It was hard enough for you to leave Walt behind as it was. If you'd seen any more of him, you never would have had the guts to give him up again._ His thoughts began to clear. He became aware that Minnie was shouting at Maleficent. He couldn't remember the last time he had heard his girlfriend sound so righteously angry.

"…and I don't care if I _amuse_ you, or however you're thinking of ridiculing me today! You _will_ come to regret terrorizing the people I care about!"

"I look forward to seeing your pitiful attempt," Maleficent said smoothly. "It's come to something when Mickey Mouse must hide behind his fragile sweetheart. Till next time, little mice." Pluto lunged forward, snapping, but she was gone in another flare of flames. His teeth closed on empty air.

Minnie immediately spun around. "Don't you dare let her get to you, Mickey!" she said in a voice that was equal parts concern and command. "You have nothing to be ashamed of! You did the right thing, and—"

"I know," Mickey panted, reaching out to scratch Pluto's head for reassurance. "I know. I'm not as easily manipulated as she seems to think."

"You don't have to pretend," Minnie said gently. "I saw your face—she really rattled you." She scowled. "Did you hear what she called _me_? Fragile!"

Mickey forced a wry smile. "She doesn't know you too well, does she?"

"I should say not! I'd like to see _her_ drive a complete circuit of the Monorail at top speed while being attacked by swarms of little flying robots!"

Her sheer petulance was oddly cheering. Maybe it was a touch of the absurd—she had just come away from a tense face-off with Maleficent, and instead of being breathless with fear or rage or triumph, she was _annoyed at having been called names_. With a small shudder, Mickey threw off his lingering insecurity and smiled for real. "So," he said casually. "I believe we had an appointment with the ground?"

"Don't say it like _that_," said Minnie. "That makes it sound like we're about to be thrown out of a plane."

"Compared to what we've been going through," Mickey sighed, "getting thrown out of a plane would be a picnic."

* * *

Central Plaza was, once again, a site of jubilation, as characters poured out of Fantasyland to greet their newly restored comrades. The rescued group was a small one (animation had been a slow business in the late Sixties and early Seventies) but this in no way diminished the joyous spirit of reunion. 

Mickey let his gaze sweep the area, taking in their faces. He felt his own expression harden slightly, for among those being gleefully greeted were some of the most innocent and inoffensive members of the Disney Family: Duchess and her three kittens, Mowgli, Christopher Robin and the friends from the Hundred-Acre Wood. It came as no surprise, of course, but Mickey realized that he had never actually gone over a mental list of who must still be trapped in Inpotentia…and now, thinking specifically of these childlike souls suffering in that dismal void, he was suddenly filled with a quiet, protective rage against the evildoer who was responsible. He could scarcely fathom the depth of depravity it would take to wish harm on the likes of Marie the kitten, or meek little Piglet.

After the first moment, Minnie and Pluto darted past him to add their welcomes and gestures of affection to the celebration. Mickey hung back, eyeballing the gathering and making a tally: who was present, who had yet to be rescued. He didn't want any more rude awakenings.

He thought of the Dispirations, limitless in number and infinitely adaptable, completely under Maleficent's sway. The Wicked Fairy had amply demonstrated that she was not all talk, and he had no reason to think that would change just because he had managed to jump her nasty psychological hurdle. If anything, she would answer his persistence with ever more insidious and brutal tactics, and with the Dispirations in her service, her threat was more severe than it had ever been.

So far—_so far_—she had directed her attacks at him and the rest of the Sensational Six. Her logical next move would be to target the innocent bystanders, the characters currently rejoicing in Central Plaza. _And I can't protect them all at once,_ he realized with a sinking heart. But then he looked again, and reconsidered. _But maybe I don't have to…_

Inside the mouse's ever-busy head, a new plan began to formulate.

* * *

The Dispirations were restless, to the extent that they were capable of feeling such things. They milled about the lair like worker bees on a honeycomb, chittering amongst themselves in voices just outside the range of conscious perception. Some still wore the aquatic or robotic bodies they had adopted in Tomorrowland, while others had reverted to their default formless state. A few had even adapted themselves to the environs of Maleficent's fortress, and taken the shapes of rats or lizards. 

From the comforting Gothic splendor of her stone throne, Maleficent watched her bizarre servants dispassionately, resting her chin on one hand and stroking an agitated Diabolo with the other. At length, she sat up straighter and said "How strange they are, pet. I cannot help but wonder what drives them, now that they are no longer starved of reality."

Diabolo bristled his head feathers and made a disdainful croak.

Maleficent sniggered. "Jealousy becomes you not, Diabolo. I confess that their performance thus far has been…unsatisfactory, but that may be due as much to poor planning on my part as to poor execution on theirs. I rebuked them for their lack of subtlety while still sending them to assault Mickey Mouse and his companions directly. I really should take my own advice."

She rose to her feet, grasped her staff where it leaned against the arm of the throne, and tapped it sharply on the flagged floor, calling the Dispirations to attention.

"Thus far," she intoned, "we have faced the enemy head-on, with the result that they continue to cry defiance. It is time to try a new strategy. When I send you again into the park, do not seek out our foes. Instead, let them come to you…but make it so that wherever they may go, there some of you will be." She let her voice take on a purring, cajoling tone. "You have nourished yourselves on dreams of the future, and acquired the substance and power denied you for so long. But I have so much more to offer you. There are other dreams here, nearly infinite in scope and ripe for the taking. If you have grown this strong on one small subset of the magic of this place, just imagine what you will gain by partaking of _all_ of it."

She paused for dramatic effect. It was more for her benefit than that of the Dispirations, which were still much too uncomplicated to get anything more out of language than its straightforward meaning. For Maleficent's purposes, that was enough. Excitement—or whatever it was that passed for excitement in their rudimentary minds—swept the multitude like wind, leaving the Dispirations ruffled and noisy in its wake.

Maleficent began once again to open the portal that would release them into the world. "Go, my minions," she said. "I give you all of Disneyland to be your succor and your territory. Take from it whatever you require…in return, I ask only that you remain alert to the presence of our enemies, and _attack to destroy_ such of them as cross your paths."

A sense of affirmation instantly rose from the swarm of creatures. Maleficent smiled, reveling in the absoluteness of her influence over them, and permitted them to pass through the portal. Then she closed it behind them and settled back onto her throne.

Diabolo cawed inquiringly.

"I really couldn't say," she admitted, letting him hop onto her hand. "But I doubt it matters. They seem content to let me do the thinking for them." She sighed comfortably. "That initial setback has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, has it not? I had hoped only to nullify Disneyland's progress, but with the Dispirations under my command, I have the opportunity to do so much more…to remake the park in my own image, as it were. They can be anything I want them to be.

"What do you think, pet? What would Disneyland be like if all the dreams it was built on…were nightmares?"

To Be Continued…

* * *

_A/N: Sorry once again about the painfully long time between updates. I would make excuses, except that they'd all be the same ones I've used before: writer's block, being extremely busy, getting distracted by other projects, etc. You don't want to hear all that, you just want me to update more frequently! Am I right? Again, I promise to do my best, but my muse is a fickle one, so I really can't promise anything except that I will finish the story. I have the end very clearly in mind; it's the stuff between now and then that's being slow to develop._

_In the meantime, my faithful reader and reviewer **Aquarian Wolf** has launched a wonderful story, "Welcome to the Tragic Kingdom," that I would recommend for anyone who is enjoying "Crowns." AW is a very talented writer with a gift for expanding on the canon depictions of familiar characters, and she gives the Magic Kingdom the dramatic treatment it so clearly deserves and is so unjustly denied by the suits at the Walt Disney Corporation. Go check it out! Go, go!_

_—Karalora_


	16. Chapter 16

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 16: Walking Through Memories

Nearly all animals sleep, and many dream. What distinguishes human beings from other creatures is that their dreams spill over into their waking lives, where they are more easily remembered and, most importantly, under the dreamers' conscious control. Moreover, humankind has a peculiar obsession with both nocturnal and waking dreams, with analyzing them, interpreting them…and with realizing them. In every human dream is a seed of potential for changing the world, and this potentiality gives all such dreams a measure of power.

That which _inspires_ dreams, then, serves as a nexus of raw possibility. And if the nexus itself is the product of intense dreaming, a positive feedback cycle is created, and the power increases exponentially.

As everyone knows, power corrupts—not inevitably, but predictably enough to make the saying trite. But that is only half the story. Power not only corrupts, it can _be_ corrupted. There is no dream so pure that it cannot have the elements of nightmare introduced. And some dreams, already skirting the line between pleasant flights of fancy and dreadful phantasms, are inherently susceptible to this kind of pollution.

Every good adventure contains a dose of danger. But as the danger increases, it shades into horror, and no one can say for sure where the line is…

And so the Dispirations spread throughout Disneyland, adapting themselves seamlessly to the themed lands and attractions. Soon the jungles of Adventureland were teeming with deadly constrictor snakes, venomous spiders, and other insidious animals. Fantasyland was invaded by malicious goblins and other loathsome creatures of myth and folklore. The pristine wilderness of Frontierland was tainted by the presence of rabid coyotes, demons from Indian legends, and poisonous walking cacti. Tomorrowland again had savage fish swimming the lagoon and rogue robots lurking in its high-tech buildings and highways. In New Orleans Square, a creeping fog populated the avenues and back alleys with eldritch voodoo spirits and hungry alligators.

Not that a casual passer-through would have been aware of any of them. Stealth and cunning were practices that came easily to the Dispirations, which were used to going without notice—it was, after all, the whole reason for their charade of existence. They kept scrupulously to the shadows and the alcoves and the hidden places, gorging themselves on the bounty of the park's creative energy in private, growing stronger by the minute.

Lying in wait.

* * *

Merlin, like most practitioners of the magical arts, did not believe in mere coincidence. That was how he knew Professor von Drake and himself had gotten it exactly right. 

He had never made a formal study of the subject, but his own experiences had always suggested that valuable insights were primarily a matter of serendipity. One could encourage them through various mental exercises, but ultimately it was very much a matter of chance whether one had the right idea at the right time. This meant, fortunately, that time itself was the best cure for a mental block. Even, perhaps, if the mind in question did not perceive the time passing.

Such was his conjecture, anyway. All he knew for sure was that his efforts at analyzing the precise metaphysical nature of Disneyland's transformation had been proceeding sluggishly until, like a lightning bolt to the corpus callosum, ten years' worth of scholarly inspiration had poured into his brain. And in a virtual instant, everything had come together.

Time. Space. Matter. Energy. Spirit. Magic. _Thought_… All at once, the connections between them had become clear, and almost without planning to, Merlin had picked up his chalk and drawn an elegantly simple diagram on Blacky.

And then he had glanced across the room, intending to get von Drake's attention, only to see that the eccentric duck had drawn an identical diagram on his giant pad of graph paper.

Ludwig von Drake, like most experts in quantum mechanics, did not believe in mere coincidence either.

The two sages' eyes met. Without a word passing between them, they realized the full significance of their mutual discovery.

"So then," said Merlin after a moment's silence, "we'd better get this information back to Mickey."

"You took the words right out of my beak," said von Drake.

* * *

It wasn't a detailed plan. In the opinions of some, this fact made it not much of a plan at all. But Mickey was used to flying by the seat of his distinctive red shorts, and he had learned that the details were always the first thing to go if a plan needed altering, which they usually did. 

And in any case, the simplicity of this plan was part of its beauty. Mickey chided himself for not thinking of it sooner, for being so focused on protecting the Disney Family that he had forgotten one very important thing: many of the characters involved were more than capable of protecting themselves, and each other. In his adamant conviction to be responsible for them, he had sold them all short. Well, no more! Disneyland was home to all of them, and they would all have a hand in defending it from Maleficent's spiteful depredations, to the extent that they were able.

Of course, they weren't all currently present to hear him. He would have to fix that before he got all geared up to give a big speech. But collecting the absentees would take time, and he hadn't quite decided how to approach that aspect yet. On the one hand, though they were variously too loyal, too proud, or too stubborn to admit it, he knew the rest of the Sensational Six had to be completely exhausted after everything they had gone through in retrieving the Rocket Crown—they hadn't had the benefit of a nap in Walt's apartment between then and now. The sun was getting low, and it was tempting just to tell everyone to meet back up in the morning, as he had after placing the Mouseketeer Crown. But he was leery of doing nothing for that length of time, of giving Maleficent and her Dispirations a whole night (the most powerful time for Evil) to continue their own insidious plans unopposed.

But he would have to come to a decision soon. The latest reunion was starting to run out of steam; the gathering was threatening to break up. And that in and of itself helped Mickey work out the next five minutes. If the characters were already getting into a mind to go about their business, making them wait around while their more secretive fellows were collected would only…well, it wouldn't be a very popular move. They would get bored, and annoyed, and restless, when Mickey needed them focused and gung-ho.

He whistled for attention. "I'll make this as quick as I can. Maleficent's escalating things faster than the gang and I can keep up by ourselves. She's recruited an army of creatures from Inpotentia—shapeshifters called Dispirations—and they've been such a threat to us that I hate to think what would happen if they came after any of you, and you were unprepared. So I need all of you to start taking your defense into your own hands. _Now_ it's battle stations."

He paused to let his words sink into their ears. A quiet murmur of alarm arose and spread, but Mickey had been expecting that. He let them get the initial rush out of their collective system, then started speaking again before it could get out of hand. "I know not all of you are fighters, but if we're smart about this, those who are will more than make up for those who aren't."

"I must say, I _am_ looking forward to turning the tables on that blighter Maleficent," said Robin Hood, stepping to the front of the assembly. "What's our strategy, Mickey?"

"I'm leaving that mostly up to you folks," Mickey replied. "You all know your own strengths and limitations better than I do. Just remember: as always, safety is our Number One priority. I don't want anyone so eager to be a hero that they go _looking_ for trouble."

"Aw, he's takin' all the fun out of it," muttered a deep, drawling voice from somewhere in the crowd. Mickey couldn't tell whether it was Baloo, Little John, or Thomas O'Malley speaking—both the voice and the laid-back attitude could have belonged to any of the three.

"In the meantime," Mickey continued, brushing off the not-so-serious complaint, "I need a few of you to travel around the park, find any stragglers, and get them together with the rest of us. I don't want _anyone_ left out…even if they normally prefer to be reclusive. To get it done as quickly and efficiently as possible, let's have three small teams that can move fast and be persuasive if necessary. I think—"

He broke off as something with blunt claws pawed at his legs from behind. Assuming it was Pluto, he turned to gentle scold the dog, only to see that his assailant was much smaller than his beloved pet…and not quite as canine. In fact it was Merlin's tame Dispiration, the little winged fox creature…what was her name? Hydrangea?

"Uh…can I help you?" he asked as a murmur of puzzlement spread among the watching characters. Mickey was suddenly abnormally self-conscious. There was something very awkward about talking casually to a friendly Dispiration—probably the one-and-only friendly one—just after expounding on the inordinate danger posed by Dispirations. That his audience didn't _know_ Hypatia (Aha, that was her name!) was a Dispiration was no comfort—they knew she was something suspiciously unfamiliar, at any rate, and they would find out she was a Dispiration as soon as someone thought to ask one of the Sensational Six.

Hypatia, meanwhile, was tugging at the hem of Mickey's shorts with her teeth and making insistent whining sounds, and he was pretty sure she wasn't merely begging for snacks. "Listen, folks," he addressed the bemused characters. I have to take care of this, and I'm not sure how long it'll take. Minnie and Donald, you two can organize the three search-and-retrieval teams. Daisy, I think you should probably come with me. If this is about what I think it is, we might need your insight."

"Oh, of course!" Daisy replied, flouncing forward.

"Lead the way, Hypatia," said Mickey. The little creature yapped and bounded back toward Fantasyland, fluttering her wings every few steps. Mickey and Daisy followed, as their significant others stepped up to take charge of the gathering.

The noise of the crowd seemed to fade unnaturally quickly as they passed under the archway of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Mickey glanced over his shoulder—Central Plaza _looked_ slightly faded too, as though there were a light mist covering the area. He paused, blinking, but the hub had gone back to its normal appearance, leaving Mickey to wonder whether he had, perhaps, only imagined the haziness.

"Mickey? Aren't you coming?" said Daisy from about twenty feet ahead of him.

"Whoops! Sorry about that; I got a little distracted," said Mickey, hurrying to catch up.

When they arrived at Merlin's library, the wizard and his scientist colleague had cleared enough floor space to give some kind of presentation. Merlin's animated blackboard stood at one end of the space, along with a second easel holding a jumbo-sized pad of graph paper, and the same image was marked on both: a large circle divided vertically down the middle by an undulating line, with two smaller circles nestled into the waves of the line, one on each side. It looked slightly like a yin-yang, an impression that was enhanced by the double drawing: one in white chalk on the black slate, the other in black ink on white paper. The two scholars themselves were arranging a few hard-seated chairs at the other end of the space.

"Excellent work, Hypatia!" said Merlin, eliciting a chirrup from the vulpine Dispiration. "You'll get a treat for this. Mickey—oh, and Daisy too, I see—have a seat. You'll be pleased to know that Professor von Drake and myself have cracked the mystery surrounding Disneyland's exact status."

"I figured as much," Mickey grinned. "What's with the two drawings?"

"Extraordinary, isn't it?" said Merlin. "Believe it or not, the Professor and I drew these simultaneously, without consulting one another at all. At least not consciously, though I have wondered if, perhaps, the unique nature of our research allowed for a certain amount of telepathic resonance…but I digress. Professor, if you would join me?"

The two sages moved to the twin displays, wielding academic pointers, and launched their explanation.

"Forgive us for not labeling these diagrams more clearly," said Merlin, gesturing with his pointer at von Drake's drawing, which was the slightly clearer of the two, and less likely to smudge. "The large circle you see here represents, well, everything. This wavy line is the boundary between reality as we know it on the one side, and Inpotentia on the other. The line is wavy rather than straight because reality and Inpotentia interact in many ways, not all of them straightforward by any means. Are you following so far?"

"Seems pretty clear," Daisy agreed. "What are the two smaller circles?"

Professor von Drake broke in, jabbing with his own pointer at the upper of the two circles, which was on the side of the "reality as we know it" side of the diagram. "This," he said dramatically, "is Disneyland as it ought to be and usually is—firmly anchored on the real world side of things, but in close contact with Inpotentia. That's why so many terrifical ideas in entertainment get their start here." He began speaking more quickly, waving the pointer back and forth across the diagram. "But the thing you gotta remember is, _before_ they exist in reality, all ideas half-exist on the other side, in Inpotentia. And as your encounter with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit showed, some ideas go back over there _after_ they been mostly forgotten over here. That means which side of _this line_ an idea sits on depends mostly on its location along the axis of the fourth dimension, which, as everyone knows, is Time. And _that's_ why, when Maleficent started messing with Disneyland's timestream, she was also messing with this boundary over here, between reality and Inpotentia."

"Wait a minute," Mickey half-interrupted, "if the top circle is Disneyland in the real world, but sitting right alongside Inpotentia, does that mean the bottom circle is Disneyland the other way around? Has the park been _moved_ to Inpotentia?"

"Yes and no," said Merlin. "It _has_ been moved, but not in its original form. You see, Inpotentia is not quite real, being made up of everything that is, er, made-up. But Disneyland _is_ a real place. And a truly real thing, _by definition_, cannot be contained within a realm of intangible ideas. Thus, the process of being transferred across the boundary caused the park to become overlaid with what you might call a spiritual reflection of itself, composed of some of the substance of Inpotentia. Rather like camouflage, actually, or a protective shell. The inner core of reality remains, but is inaccessible—the Disneyland that we can currently see and feel and interact with is, in a sense, an illusion."

Mickey blew, scratching his head as though he could etch the astounding information into his mind. It seemed incredible, but at the same time it made an odd sort of sense…

"How can it be an illusion?" Daisy wondered. "It certainly seems real enough…just like I remember it from the first time it was 1965—I mean, 1975."

"You're closer to the truth than you think, kiddo," said Professor von Drake. "It's not just like you remember it, it's just like _everybody_ remembers it. If this old coot over here wants to call it a 'spiritual reflection,' that's his kooky business, but I would call it more of a composite memory. Over the years, all the millions and millions of people who have visited Disneyland have built up memories of the place, and of course a memory is just an _idea_ about something that happened in the past! And what's the natural habitat of ideas? Inpotentia, that's what! And all those memories cluster together and overlap until you get something that looks hardly any different from the real thing…at least at first."

"That's it!" Mickey exclaimed, leaping out of his chair to the consternation of the other three. "That explains so much! Thanks, you two! Come on, Daisy, let's get back and tell the others!"

"But Mickey, I don't think they're finished!" she protested helplessly as the excited mouse grabbed her hand and hauled her bodily out of her own chair and out of the library. Merlin and von Drake were left blinking in their dusty wake.

"Oh, good heavens," Merlin said in an understated tone. There didn't seem to be anything else to say.

* * *

Every double agent eventually runs into a particular dilemma, one that has nothing to do with split loyalties. It is the question of whether, having just acquired some time-sensitive information of vital importance to one's allies, one should take it immediately to them, possibly risking discovery, or stay undercover in the hope of learning yet more of value. (For incomplete knowledge can be worse than no knowledge at all.) 

The Queen of Hearts had decided on the first option. Better, she thought, a timely general warning than a more specific one that might arrive too late. The only difficulty lay in maneuvering her way out of the Villains' Lair without being intercepted: a significant challenge, as the Wonderland monarch was _not_ built for stealth. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was against her nature _not_ to crave attention.

As the furious arguing in the meeting hall began to give way to intense plotting, the Queen slowly sidled around the table, hoping the other villains were too absorbed in their discussion to notice the scraping of her chair against the stone floor. If she could manage to get herself parallel to the exit, it would be much easier for her to slip away without detection.

Her foot bumped against something under the table. It was Prince John, still curled into the fetal position and sucking away at his thumb, as he had been since shortly after he burst shrieking into the meeting hall. Ironically, it had been that pathetic display of running in panicked circles and moaning for his mother that had spurred the Villains into the frenzy of debate that was only just now settling down into some semblance of cooperation.

"I still say we should remain uninvolved entirely," Lady Tremaine was saying. "My daughters and I shall have no part of any scheme to oppose either Mickey Mouse _or_ Maleficent."

"With all due ressspect, Madam," moaned Kaa the python, recently returned from his sojourn in Inpotentia, "you would not sssay that if you had ssspent even one sssecond ssstuck in that unssspeakable sssituation."

"You're too polite, scaly," grumped Madam Mim. "I think we all know the _real_ reason Ms. Snooty here doesn't want to get involved."

"_Do_ tell," Lady Tremaine said pointedly. It was the last part of the discussion the Queen of Hearts heard, because by that time, she had managed to slip out of the meeting hall and was hustling down the torchlit corridor outside.

So intent was she on fleeing the Lair that she completely failed to notice that she was being followed…not that she would have anyway. Her pursuers were as built for stealth as she wasn't. But they were also short of attention span, and long before she reached the foyer, they tired of the sport and decided to reveal themselves.

"Going somewhere, Your Majesty is?" said a pair of high, soft, slightly sibilant voices, differing in pitch by a minor fifth but otherwise identical.

The Queen of Hearts was so surprised that she literally jumped out of her shoes, leaving the prim red pumps empty on the floor until she crashed back down into them in a flurry of velvet skirts and wired petticoats. She recovered her composure as quickly as possible and immediately rounded on the twin Siamese cats grinning at her out of the dark space between the reach of two adjacent torches, bellowing like the Villain she technically was.

"CATS! Oh, so it's _you_ two, is it? How _dare_ you sneak up on me like that! I'll see your heads roll for it!"

Still grinning, completely unperturbed by her outburst, Si and Am sauntered forward out of the shadow, moving in eerie synchrony as they affectionately rubbed their hips and shoulders against the outlying regions of her gown. "What business is it of yours what I wish to do with my time, anyway?" the Queen continued huffily.

"What is meaning, 'business?'" asked one of the cats in the none-too-subtle Thai accent the two of them affected.

"Is seeming strange that Queen of Hearts would leave meeting," the other one continued.

"Villains maybe deciding very important things…" said the first.

"…but Queen not staying to hear."

"We wondering: why not?" they said in unison. The spooky dissonance created by the pitch interval between their voices reverberated across the stones of the hallway.

Shaking off intense feelings of being creeped out, the Queen of Hearts drew herself up to her full height and puffed herself out to her full girth, nearly filling the narrow corridor. "_We_ have better things to do with our time then sit around listening to petty bickering," she said languidly, fanning herself with her heart-shaped scepter. "Whatever they decide in there, I'm sure it will be mentioned in the next issue of _Villain's Week_." She whirled around and began stomping down the hall once again, muttering "_Cats_," under her breath. She maintained her belligerent posture even after turning the next corner, in case Si and Am were still following her.

They weren't. They were strolling back toward the meeting hall, side-by-side in perfect tandem, wearing identical expressions of self-satisfaction. They considered mischief its own reward.

That the conspirators would probably be willing to pay them a handsome quantity of milk and sardines for the tidbit of knowledge they had just acquired…that was merely a bonus.

* * *

Worlds away (figuratively, but perhaps not figuratively _enough_), under the jewel-green canopy of the Adventureland jungle, another Villain-by-default was making himself comfortable in a hammock woven of palm leaves. Something was vaguely troubling him, like a nightmare that he couldn't quite remember. But under-ripe bananas before bedtime would do that. He folded his long, hairy arms behind his head and made a token attempt at dozing off. 

Not five minutes later, he raised one hand and snapped his leathery fingers. "Music," he commanded brusquely.

The monkeys dutifully began singing: a slow tune, more like lounge music than jazz, but more suitable as a lullaby than the normal upbeat rhythms. One or two of them seemed a trifle off-key, but reprimanding them, King Louie decided, could wait until after his nap.

To Be Continued…

* * *

_A/N: Three and a half months. I know. My soul is black with shame. I prostrate myself at my readers' collective feet and beg for forgiveness._

_As a trivial consolation, I am opening up a Suggestion Box regarding this fanfic. The basic plot right up until the end is already determined, but there's plenty of room to fiddle with the details. What characters and attractions would you like to see showcased? If I can make it work with my overall vision (she said with that breed of arrogance peculiar to artists), I'm more than happy to Give My Public What It Wants._

_Karalora_


	17. Chapter 17

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 17: Teamwork and Dreamplay

No sooner had Mickey and Daisy emerged from the passage to Merlin's library than they found themselves dodging elephants. There was a moment of scuffling panic, of frantically sidestepping ponderous feet and swinging trunks, before the two were able to put some safe distance between themselves and the oblivious pachyderms, and then to take in the scene that the Fantasyland courtyard had become.

The area had never been so busy—not even on Opening Day, when there had been considerably more people present, but nowhere near as much frenetic activity. To call it "organized chaos" would do justice to neither organization nor chaos. It was more the case that some of the characters swarming the courtyard were engaged in structured endeavors, while others (mostly children) were at loose ends, and still others were floaters, moving from task to task to help out as needed, and keeping the kids out of everyone's way in the meantime. The aggregate effect was of a scaled-up beehive, complete with buzzing, wherein some of the bees were elephants.

Mickey got a better look at just what the elephants were doing. Something—a garrison or a watchtower or something of that nature—was being constructed on the roof of the eastern show building, and the giant creatures were functioning as living dumb-waiters, passing tools, building materials, and occasionally people from ground level to rooftop and back again. They were also, in the brief spans between deliveries, _flirting_ with each other, which is the sort of thing that must be seen to be believed. Three ton animals with curving tusks and tree-trunk legs, giggling and coyly offering one another uprooted rosebushes…but it only stood to reason. The circus performers were all female, Colonel Hathi's troops all male, and the two herds only rarely had the opportunity to interact.

That they were interacting now meant that the search-and-retrieval operation was working. Mickey wondered who had been sent out. Peter Pan was conspicuously absent…

"Mickey," said Daisy sharply, giving him a nudge. "Don't we need to find the others and tell them what Merlin and Professor von Drake told us? I _thought_ you were in a big hurry."

Mickey shot her a peeved glance, but she was right. He began making a circuit of the courtyard, trying to spot Minnie or Donald or even Goofy against the bustling backdrop.

Everywhere he looked were distractions. Someone had started up King Arthur's Carrousel for the amusement of the children, but the only rider at the moment was Skippy the rabbit, and his purpose seemed not to be amusement per se. He (or someone else) had attached a dozen half-inch steel washers dangling on strings to the outer rim of the Carrousel canopy, and the bold little rabbit was snatching valiantly at them as the ride spun, an expression of heroic determination on his youthful face. On the far side of the Carrousel, the Mad Tea Party platform had been co-opted as an intensely challenging swordplay practice arena. Prince Charming and Prince Philip were sparring furiously, scampering over the whirling plates and dodging cup handles as their blades met. On a broad stretch of walkway nearby, Lady Kluck was leading the Princesses in an impromptu lesson in women's self-defense. Across from them, the three Good Fairies were using their magic to make a floating three-dimensional image of Hypatia's original, lobster-like form, which Owl and the Dodo were examining with detached interest, speculating airily about the anatomy and habits of Dispirations. From time to time, someone would notice Mickey and Daisy and acknowledge them with a cheery wave, then go right back to whatever it was that they were doing.

"Well, wouldja look at that?" Mickey observed appreciatively. "Everyone's really stepping up here!"

"It's pretty impressive, all right," Daisy agreed. "I just wish…what _are_ they doing up there, anyway?"

She was referring to the rooftop construction, which Mickey now realized was happening on both sides of the courtyard. It had been less obvious on the western show building because there were no elephants there. What there was instead was a familiar but unexpected person barking imperiously into a megaphone from the safety of the ground outside Snow White's Adventures.

"No, it's still not straight…a little more to the left—not _my_ left, lad, _your_ left! You two in the back, you call that a military fortification? We're dealing with shapeshifting monsters from beyond the limits o' reality as we know it, not a flock of capercaillies!"

Mickey opened his mouth to speak, but Daisy got there first: "Uncle Scrooge!" she exclaimed, flinging herself at the elder duck with semi-familial affection. "You made it!"

"Aye, lassie," he greeted her. "Donald himself came to my mansion and told me to get over to Fantasyland. It's a pickle we're in, all right, but I'm making myself useful." He paused to shout more instructions at the Dwarfs working on the roof. "I think these fellows have been too long down in their diamond mine. They don't know the first thing about setting up a defensive perimeter."

"How come you know so much about it?" Mickey asked.

"Necessity, my boy, pure necessity. I'd not have held onto my fortune so long if I didna know how to keep it safe, now, would I?"

"You said Donald told you to come here," said Daisy, steering the conversation back on track. "Where is he?"

"I presume he's still making the rounds back in Toontown. It's quite a few people that are left to evacuate, judging by the faces I'm seeing around here."

"How about Minnie and Goofy?" asked Mickey. "And Pluto?"

"I spotted Goofy as I was on my way here, loitering near the Matterhorn. I do believe he's stationed there to brief the newcomers from Tomorrowland as they arrive. If there are any, that is—I have my doubts about that. As for your bonnie lass and faithful hound, I don't know where they are. Of course, I havena been looking for them either."

"Well, thanks anyway," said Mickey. "At least we know where Donald and Goofy are. We'll leave you to your, uh, work." With that, he made a beckoning gesture to Daisy, and the two of them ambled away, continuing their casual circuit of the courtyard.

"So now what?" asked Daisy.

Mickey made a noncommittal shrug. "Obviously, we have to wait for everyone to get back before we can do anything else."

The duck pursed her beak. "How long is _that_ gonna take? We don't even have the faintest idea where Minnie and Pluto are."

"I have a hunch, actually," said Mickey. "I told Minnie and Donald to organize the search-and-retrieval teams, remember? But it looks like Donald assigned _himself_ to one of them. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Minnie and Pluto were part of another."

"Makes sense," Daisy reasoned. "But we still don't know _where_ they are, or how long they'll take to get back. I mean, they could be anywhere in the park, from Tom Sawyer's Island to Carousel Theater."

"Or they might be right behind you," said a welcome voice.

Mickey and Daisy spun around to see Minnie herself, looking a bit tired and disheveled, but still cheerful. Pluto was by her side, in a similar state. There was a broken stalk of green bamboo stuck in his collar.

"Minnie!" Mickey exclaimed, gathering her into a sudden embrace. "Gosh, it's great to see you! You too, boy," he added, knuckle-rubbing Pluto's head.

Minnie giggled. "Oh, Mickey, we haven't been apart _that_ long…this time."

Daisy plucked the bamboo out of Pluto's collar. "Been to Adventureland, have we?"

Minnie nodded. "Pluto and I teamed up with Bagheera to comb the jungle. We got as far as Colonel Hathi's base camp before it got too dark to continue. We'll have to wait for morning to get word to the other jungle animals. I hope you're not too disappointed…I'd forgotten just how spooky Adventureland can be at night. I kept thinking the jungle was going to turn real, or that we'd be attacked by Dispirations or something."

"You did great, Minnie," Mickey reassured her. "More than I expected, to be honest—I didn't think you'd send _yourself_ out to search."

"It seemed the best way to go about it."

"I know what you mean," said Daisy. "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."

Minnie pulled a face. "I prefer to think of it as proactive leadership. Anyway, what about you two? What did Merlin want?"

"Oh boy, where to start?" Daisy said with a touch of melodrama.

"Not yet, Daisy," said Mickey. "We're still waiting for Donald and Goofy. In the meantime, Minnie, who else is still out doing search-and-retrieval?"

Minnie tapped her chin, thinking. "Donald's got Toontown covered…and I have Peter Pan and Tinkerbell doing a general sweep of Frontierland, and Dumbo and Timothy in Tomorrowland, just in case anyone's over there. Oh, and Perdita and Owl did a once-over of Main Street, but they finished even before I left. I know you said _three_ teams, Mickey, but we had enough volunteers for five, and Donald and I figured that the more there were, the more quickly the search would go."

"I'm not complaining," Mickey chuckled.

"There they are!" Daisy piped up suddenly, pointing toward the far end of the courtyard, where Donald and Goofy were just coming into view. Donald had his three boisterous nephews in tow. "Donald! Over here, sweetie!"

The two groups met just past the Carrousel, near the entrance to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Donald sent the boys off to play, and the rest of them moved off to the (relatively) quiet interior of the Fantasyland Theater across the way, to bring each other all up to speed.

* * *

The first thing the Sensational Six noticed about the theater was that it was, oddly enough, operating as per normal, playing "The Band Concert," Mickey's first full-color short subject, to an audience of none.

"Wow, this sure takes me back," Daisy remarked. "I'd almost forgotten what it looked like in here."

"Ha," said Donald wryly. "We're here because Maleficent _literally_ 'took us back.'"

They selected seats and got down to business. (It felt awkward to be talking out loud in a cinema, even an otherwise empty one.) "First of all," said Mickey to the antique strains of the William Tell Overture, "you guys did a great job with the search-and-retrieval mission. I know some of our friends are still out there, but they should be able to hold out until morning. The ones we would need to worry about, the vulnerable ones, all seem to be present and accounted for. Did you spot any Dispirations while you were out?"

There was a little chorus of no's. Minnie furrowed her brow. "I think I might have _heard_ them, though, out in the jungle. I definitely heard something I didn't quite recognize, but it was hard to tell what it was over the ambiance recordings. It sounded like…whispering? Maybe it was just my imagination."

"I'm not so sure the two are mutually exclusive," Daisy pointed out. "Not after what we learned from Merlin and Professor von Drake."

"Oh, yeah!" said Goofy. "What'd they say?"

Mickey got serious. "You might find this hard to believe, but if you think about it, it actually explains a lot. As it turns out, Disneyland itself has been moved, in its entirety, to Inpotentia—" He held up his hands to forestall protests. "—and, in order to blend in, has been wrapped up in an imaginary version of itself—a spiritual reflection, Merlin called it—made of the composite memories of everyone who's ever visited it. And that version of Disneyland—not the real one—is where we are now."

Donald leaped to his feet and spun about to face the rest of them. "What? How did _that_ happen?" he spluttered, risking total unintelligibility. Behind him on the screen, a freak tornado bore down upon the concert band.

"Believe me, sugar-beak," said Daisy. "It doesn't make any more sense with the explanation they gave us than it does without. I think we just have to accept it and move on."

"But when I heard that was the case," Mickey continued, "I realized that it did a lot to explain all the strange things we've been noticing about the park. If this version of Disneyland is made of people's memories, then things they don't remember very strongly, or at all, _won't be here_. That's why we haven't seen any Cast Members or wild animals—because that's not what people really remember about this place. They remember the rides and the themed settings."

"Not to mention," Daisy put in, "how long does the average Cast Member work here? A year or two, tops? Maybe just for a summer? Doing what, four to eight hours a day, five days a week? But the rides are more-or-less permanent, and they're in the same place all the time. _Everyone_ sees them. You're right, Mickey: it does explain a lot!"

"Hey!" interjected Goofy. "It also explains how come the rides and things keep turnin' real! 'Cause that's how people see 'em when they're here! When you're a kid ridin' Pirates of the Caribbean, you might know the boat's on a track and the fire's made of cellophane, but that's not what you're thinkin' while you're there. Instead, you're thinkin': Wow, pirates!"

"Exactly," said Mickey. "Or remember when Professor von Drake tried to show us what was outside the park? We couldn't see it at first…because the sky was in the way."

"The sky over Disneyland is part of people's memories," Minnie deduced. "The weather's almost always so nice here—it makes an impression, especially on people who've traveled from out-of-state. But you can't even see the surrounding city from inside the berm, so when we tried to look at it, we saw what was _really_ out there." She shifted in her seat, her eyes taking on a faraway look. "So that's what Inpotentia looks like. It's beautiful, in a way, with all those colors…it's hard to believe something as horrible as the Dispirations could come from something so lovely."

"I can believe it," said Mickey. "_All_ ideas come from Inpotentia, good and bad."

"The Dispirations aren't all bad, either," said Daisy. "The little one Merlin is keeping is friendly. Cute, too. I'm still trying to figure that one out, but there you have it."

"_I_ still don't trust it," said Donald. "It seems awfully convenient that the _one_ Dispiration anyone manages to capture turns out to be the nice one."

"Maybe," Mickey said pensively. "But that's getting off the subject. My point is, we have to be careful not to take what we see at face value. Not only are we trapped in the past, but the part we can see isn't even the _real_ past. Maleficent's spell has more layers than even she intended, and I just hope she hasn't caught on yet to what all she's done."

Minnie frowned. "_I_ just hope her ignorance doesn't mean she was wrong about how to break the spell. What if we find and replace all the crowns, and that still doesn't do it?"

"We'll worry about that when and if it happens," said Mickey resolutely. "For now, let's stay focused on finding them. It seems to be working as advertised so far."

"Speaking of working," said Daisy, "whose idea was it to have the characters turn the Fantasyland courtyard into a—a military base?"

There was a brief pause. "Uh…theirs, I think," Goofy volunteered.

"Wasn't it _yours_, Mickey?" said Minnie. "Maybe not directly, but you did tell them to devise a strategy for themselves. Apparently, this is what they devised."

"Well, appropriate delegation _is_ nine-tenths of successful leadership," Mickey grinned as though reciting from somewhere. The truth was that he had just made that statistic up on the spur of the moment. But confident delivery is, after all, nine-tenths of credibility.

"So now what?" asked Donald.

Mickey heaved a huge sigh and slumped dramatically in his seat. "To be honest," he replied, "I wouldn't mind calling it a day. After everything I've been through today, I _must_ be running on borrowed energy by now, and I'd hate to see what the interest rates'll be like if I don't start making payments soon." The words felt strange in his mouth—extended metaphors weren't his usual style. "Now that we've got a secure base of operations, I don't mind—" He broke off, noticing that Pluto had suddenly perked up and was gazing toward the door, both ears cocked to listen and a faintly worried expression on his doggy face. "What is it, boy?"

"He must hear something outside," said Minnie.

The rest of them listened, but the cartoon had gotten to its noisy grand finale and they could hear nothing out of the ordinary over the energetic music of the disrupted orchestra. Pluto started to whine softly. "Come on," said Donald wearily, hopping up and striding up the aisle toward the exit. The others followed, uneasy about what they might find.

* * *

They emerged into the scene of a mostly one-sided but nonetheless extremely belligerent row. It involved the newly arrived Queen of Hearts, which accounted neatly for both the belligerence and the one-sidedness, as she berated the duly apologetic Princes for…something about the Mad Tea Party, judging by her furious gestures. She was nearly incoherent with livid rage, and it was impossible to tell from her ranting alone just what the nature of her complaint was. Getting her attention in order to solicit an explanation proved to be only slightly more possible. After several abortive attempts to interject, Mickey finally stuck two fingers into his mouth and emitted a whistle of glass-shattering, New-York-City-rush-hour-taxicab-hailing proportions.

The Queen of Hearts whirled around in a flurry of red and black velvet. "Why, Mickey Mouse!" she exclaimed, instantly metamorphosing from red-faced lunatic to properly cordial monarch. "Just the gentleman I was hoping to see!" She smoothed her hair from its anger-fueled disorder back into a prim bun.

"What seems to be the problem here?" asked Mickey in his very best "traffic cop" tone (which wasn't, as a matter of fact, particularly good—his high falsetto voice inherently lacked gravitas).

The Queen puffed up. "These…_men_," she said, leveling a finger at the flustered Princes, "are using the Mad Tea Party attraction for purposes other than those for which it was intended. As supreme ruler of Wonderland, only I have the authority to sanction such a thing. Someone's head will _roll_ for this indignity!"

"Get a grip, Your Majesty!" Mickey barked. "_No one's_ head is going to roll _anywhere_! They were just making sure they're in shape to fight Maleficent's minions…as you'd know if you'd been around for the past few hours!" He suddenly realized that he was drawing dismayed stares from the gathering crowd and forced himself, by closing his eyes and breathing deeply a few times, to calm down. He realized something. "Where _have_ you been, anyway? And what did you want to see me about?"

The Wonderland monarch, basking in the onlookers' attention, fanned herself extravagantly with her scepter. "Cruella De Vil and Madam Mim called a general Villainmeet. Of course I attended—it would have been far too suspicious if I hadn't."

"Fair enough," Mickey agreed, nodding. He knew about the Villainmeets—occasional gatherings of as many of the Disney Villains as could reasonably be expected to make it, with the stated purpose of putting evil heads together for some composite mischief against the good guys, but an actual purpose more along the lines of a litmus test for villainy. If you didn't show up (and didn't have a very good excuse), you weren't a _real_ Disney Villain, and come the next issue of _Villains' Week_ (their in-house newsletter), your credibility would be shot.

True cooperation was not an option for people as fractious by nature as the Villains. Snobbery, on the other hand, was right up their alley.

"They were hoping to get us all riled up against Maleficent—to make us the instruments of their revenge, as it were," the Queen of Hearts continued. "I didn't say anything about my thoughts on the matter, of course. But they weren't making much headway until you moved time forward again and a whole new lot of Villains were freed from that Inpotentia place. When they arrived at the meeting, I thought Cruella and Mim would get some support for sure, but…" She trailed off, looking uncomfortable.

"But what?" Mickey prompted.

"We don't know whether we should," the Queen said, turning up her nose. "We _are_ still a Villain, after all."

Mickey's voice took on an edge of warning. "Your Majesty…"

"Oh, all right," she huffed. "But if my reputation suffers, I am holding _you_ personally responsible! It all started when that overgrown _cat_ Shere Khan got his bright idea…"

* * *

"_If I may interject," the crafty tiger said, not very loudly but with an air of such absolute confidence that the rest of them could not help but quiet down to listen, "why are we treating this as an either/or proposition? Surely we have options beyond the mere two currently under discussion. I for one think both of them ill become us."_

"_You've got a lot of nerve for a walking fur coat, darling," said Cruella. "Explain yourself."_

"_It seems to me," said Shere Khan, getting up from his reclining position to stalk about the room, meeting the various Villainmeet attendees' eyes one by one, "that as a group, we have been far too lazy of late. Maleficent's scheme may have been carried out with a despicable lack of professional courtesy, but she has the right idea. We all get together every so often and _talk_ about putting Mickey Mouse and his pack of do-gooders in their place, but she was the first one of us in _years_ to bother _doing_ anything toward that end."_

_He leapt onto the closest table—occupied by the Tremaine family—and dug his razor-sharp claws into the wood, eliciting little squeaks of fright from the girls. "Who are we?" he challenged the gathering with a hint of predatory snarl in his voice. "Are we so cowed by our past defeats that we will simply lie back and let others write the story from now on? Was it not _our _desires and ambitions that moved the stories in the first place?" He resumed his usual smooth, unruffled tone. "Fight back against Maleficent if you wish, or—" He chuckled and fixed his golden gaze on Lady Tremaine. "—stay out of the fray altogether, like a timid little prey animal. It's no concern of mine either way. But I intend to take the initiative. To take advantage of the current crisis."_

_"Oh, just spill it already," Madam Mim sneered. "What do you have in mind?"_

_"A takeover," Shere Khan said, leaving his teeth bared so that the candlelight glinted off his dagger-like canines. "We have before us an unprecedented opportunity. Mickey and his virtuous lackeys will have their hands full dealing with Maleficent. They won't be expecting any trouble from us, because everyone knows Villains can't cooperate for any length of time. As long as we don't make absolute buffoons of ourselves—" He shot Kaa a withering glare. "—the park can be ours inside of a day. And after that…well, I'll just leave that up to you, shall I?" He sauntered back down to the floor with a great groaning of wood—the table wasn't really designed to support 500 pounds of jungle cat._

_"A very pretty speech, to be sure," said Lady Tremaine, brushing a few splinters from her sleeves. "But I'll not be baited with aspersions cast on my courage or any other aspect of my character. And I do not see what my daughters and I stand to gain from a reckless grab for power with little or no thought given to such matters as how it will be shared once obtained."_

_But she was alone in her impassive state. All around her, the other Villains in attendance were beginning to mutter among themselves. Even Anastasia and Drizella, despite their mother's presumption to speak for them, were exchanging sinister whispers. Shere Khan's rhetoric had definitely made an impression._

_Shortly after that, the Queen of Hearts made up her mind to leave the Villainmeet while everyone was still too distracted to notice her._

* * *

Mickey's mouth was a hard, straight line as the Queen of Hearts finished her story. "He didn't appear to have many supporters by the time I left, but there's no telling how many he eventually swayed to his side. I never knew he was such a gifted orator!"

"This is bad news, Mickey," Donald fretted. "It's been tough enough just fighting Maleficent and the Dispirations. What are we gonna do about this?"

Mickey exhaled heavily. "We'll play it by ear," he said, "take things as they come. We don't know that anyone will really go for Shere Khan's idea, and even if they do, Villains usually _can't_ work together for very long before the infighting kicks in. For now, our plate's full enough. But good job playing mole for our side, Your Majesty. In fact, that's your official job from now on. But it would raise too many suspicions if you kept sneaking out of meetings, so we'll work out some kind of communication system in the morning."

"We shan't disappoint you, Mickey," the Queen of Hearts vowed.

"In the morning?" Minnie repeated. "Does that mean…?"

"Yup," Mickey confirmed. He jumped up onto a nearby bench and cupped his mouth with his hands. "Important announcement, folks! If you have a job you're doing that can't wait, go ahead and finish it. Other than that, we're calling it a day and getting some well-deserved rest! I want everyone to stay in and around the Fantasyland courtyard for now. We'll do what we can to make sure there's enough crash space for everyone.

"With that said, I…" He paused, searching for words. "I'm so proud of the way all of you have come through, turning the courtyard into our safe haven and making sure your ready for what may well lie ahead. I never would have come up with half the ideas I've seen here this evening. Great work, everyone!"

He was met with exuberant applause and cheers. "Gosh," he stammered with a shy smile, averting his eyes. They met Minnie's, and found there an expression of pure love, pride, and unconditional support. From there he went on to meet the eyes of the others in turn, and the sense of solidarity and determination was almost a tangible thing.

_We can do this,_ Mickey realized, not with any sort of mental thunderclap but more as an acknowledgement of something he had known all along. _No matter what happens along the way, we'll manage to set everything right._

* * *

As the last, deep orange sliver of daylight faded from the western sky, nighttime—only the second one since the beginning of the adventure—settled on Disneyland like a velvet cloak. And throughout the Fantasyland courtyard, stretched out on benches and curled up in ride vehicles, using coats and curtains in place of blankets, the members of the Disney Family slept.

Not all of them, of course. Some were on watch. Peter Pan, still bursting with youthful energy even after his full evening of search-and-retrieval, casually flew to and fro over the area, his eyes eagerly darting back and forth as he scanned for potential enemies. The Seven Dwarf (except, of course, for Sleepy, who _was_ asleep) patrolled the rooftops, putting their craftsmanship to the test and making a few ad hoc alterations when they thought they could get away with the noise. Scat Cat and his band, who were nocturnal anyway, investigated all the nooks and crannies for signs of Dispiration activity. Scrappers in the best alley cat tradition, they were almost disappointed not to find anything.

But the great majority slept, and many dreamt…

Mickey, slumped comfortably in a seat in the Fantasyland Theater, found himself perched on a ball—no, not a ball, a circle—that was rolling along the hills and valleys of a sine wave, like some kind of abstracted roller coaster. Below the undulating line was solidity; above him and to all sides was the swirling, multi-hued emptiness of Inpotentia. The circle was accelerating steadily, bringing a more acute sense of weightlessness with every crest, until it leapt free of its "track" and careened off into the color-spangled haze, with Mickey still on-board…and what he was clinging to so fiercely was a turret of Sleeping Beauty's Castle—

—then he was landing in springy softness: a plush theater seat. He was in the Main Street Opera House, and the lights were dimming. The curtains drew aside, and the masterfully made audio-animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln rose to speak. But it wasn't the sixteenth President's face under the stovepipe hat, but Walt Disney's.

"Are you sure you have everything you need, Mickey?" Walt asked Mickey. "It's very important that you have everything you need."

Mickey tried to reply, to ask for clarification, but in this dream he was mute. The curtains gently swung closed again—they had changed from their normal delft blue shade to vivid green, patterned with enormous leaves and live bamboo stalks—and then the foliage was all around him, and he was in the Adventureland jungle, listening to the cacophonous calls of monkeys…

On the floor not far from Mickey, snoring away in a jerry-rigged bedroll, Goofy was also dreaming. He would not remember come morning that he had dreamt at all, but for now he tossed and mumbled, and at one point said softly, "I sure do miss you, Maxie…" But no one was awake to hear.

In the Darling children's bedroom, resting in a heap of more conventional, less lively plush animals, Winnie the Pooh dreamed of honey, as he usually did.

* * *

Somewhere else entirely, Maleficent, like Peter Pan and the Dwarfs, was not asleep. She rarely slept as it was, but on this occasion, she was actually sleepless, a thousand troublesome thoughts pressing on her mind like great jagged stones.

She had sent the Dispirations out into the park, on very nonspecific orders, and that put them out of her direct control, and _that_ made her just the slightest bit uneasy. She had had issues with incompetent minions before, and although the Dispirations were far firmer of purpose than any hog-faced goon, there was always that little bit of uncertainty.

Maleficent despised uncertainty in herself, even as she reveled in the uncertainty of others.

Then there was still the matter of Madam Mim's casual intrusion into the lair. It should never have been possible—Maleficent's preference for privacy and secrecy drove her to protect her stronghold with the best barrier enchantments she could create, and her power far outstripped that of the madcap sorceress.

Mostly, though, what kept the Wicked Fairy wakeful was the roiling intensity of her own evil. She had formulated her scheme out of a general hatred for Mickey Mouse and all that was good and pure about Disneyland, and her animosity had only increased as his diligence and goodwill undid her curse. More than anything else, she wanted not to be defeated in this. She wanted Mickey Mouse to feel the mighty fullness of her wrath, to suffer for the decades of her humiliation.

She wanted to destroy him.

To Be Continued…

_A/N: Fun Fact: Mickey's Toontown, the land, opened in 1993. According to Disneyland folklore, however, Walt and Mickey had the area built in the 1930's for the Toons to live in, and Mickey actually suggested Anaheim as the location for Disneyland so it would be right next door to his neighborhood. 1993, in this version of events, was just the year the Toons decided to open up their town to human visitors._

_Anyway, sorry about the delay. I had hoped to get this chapter out before the end of August, but work suddenly got crazy for the couple of weeks surrounding Labor Day Weekend. At least I didn't leave you hanging quite as long as last time, eh what? Another thing that I think has slowed me down these past few chapters is that the pacing of the story has swung away from action toward dialogue. Writing comes more naturally to me when I can really visualize a scene, and you can't exactly visualize dialogue. I think there have been at least three times this chapter where I scrapped several paragraphs and took a different tack with a sequence…all in the interest of quality storytelling, of course. Starting next chapter, there will be more action again—or at least lush description—and the words will come much easier. If no one minds my dropping some eyebrow-waggling hints, several important attractions made their debut in the decade of 1965-1975, and their inhabitants need to be alerted to the ongoing crisis._

_On another note, it's been some time since I've seen The Jungle Book, so I hope I got Shere Khan just right in the flashback (I wasn't about to hold off on this chapter until the re-release of the movie in October). I consider him an under-regarded villain—he displayed a masterful blend of cool arrogance and predatory savagery nearly 30 years before Scar made the scene, and he kept it up when nearly everyone around him was giving in to comedy. Plus, his motivation for villainy is so delightfully straightforward—he hates humans and wants to eat Mowgli._

_As a bonus for this chapter, I have drawn a simple portrait of Hypatia, including a description of the origins of her name and visual design. The link is on my profile page._

_—Karalora_


	18. Chapter 18

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 18: Close to Home and Far-Flung

It wasn't like before.

Before, they had been relatively unorganized. There was only Mickey's missive to meet in front of the Castle…and when they got there, he had been so strangely distant at first. Now, no communiqué was necessary—the characters simply gathered in the forward part of the courtyard as they awoke, as it was obviously the thing to do. Mickey was, again, the first one there, but this time he was chipper and sociable and overall more like the Mickey Mouse they all knew and loved.

Minnie found him near the Castle arch, telling Donald's nephews about their uncle's unprecedented courage in the Submarine Lagoon. "…maybe even thousands," he was saying. "But do you think that stopped Donald?"

Huey, Dewey, and Louie consulted amongst themselves for a moment before giving their reply: a bright "No!" delivered in perfect unison.

"You bet it didn't!" Mickey told them. "He took that rusty old harpoon and he fought the Dispirations with the strength of ten ducks! All I could see from inside the swarm was a blue and white blur."

Minnie decided to make her presence known. "Does Donald know you're telling stories about him?" she teased.

Mickey looked up, unconcerned. "Hiya, Minnie!"

"Good morning…"

"…Miss…"

"…Minnie," said the triplets in order.

Minnie tittered coyly. "Good morning, boys."

"Listen, kids, I need to have a private one-on-one with my best girl," said Mickey. "You boys run along now." At their groan of disappointment, he raised an admonishing finger. "Ah, ah, ah. I'll tell you the rest of the story another time."

As the ducklings scampered off, with knowing snickers, in search of further childish amusements, Minnie sidled up to Mickey and sneaked a quick kiss onto his cheek. "So, what's so important that it calls for a private one-on-one?"

"Don't worry, it's nothing bad," Mickey replied. "It's just such a beautiful, hopeful morning that I wanted to spend some of it with you alone." He held his hand out to her, she took it, and the two of them walked sedately through the archway on the west side of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, the one leading to the quiet, shady, garden-like area nestled between the Castle and Main Street's Carnation Plaza Garden.

It was not yet eight o'clock, and the sun had only just nudged above the skyline of Tomorrowland, leaving the park still cool and fresh by the standards of a Southern California summer. The two mice went slowly, enjoying the stillness of the young day. Soon, they would have to plunge back into their quest, but for now, the morning was theirs.

They paused on a small footbridge spanning the stream that ran from the Castle moat to the pond at the Frontierland entrance gate, leaning comfortably on the railing. Mickey reached up, idly plucked a leaf from one of the overhanging tree branches, and dropped it, watching it flutter down into the watercourse and float away downstream. "I saw them growing," he said.

"The trees?" Minnie guessed.

"Uh-huh. When I replaced the Mouseketeer Crown and the park jumped forward for the first time, it was one of the first things I noticed. It was like the best nature show ever made. But the weird thing was that I _only_ saw them growing. I _didn't_ see them being pruned."

"What would that even look like, sped up by so much?" Minnie wondered.

"I don't know," Mickey admitted. "I just found it strange that it worked that way. But I guess now we know why."

"Right," said Minnie. Neither of them felt the need to expound on what they both realized—that not only was a thing like tree pruning too mundane to stand out in guests' memories, but only a handful of them ever had the opportunity to see it: all that sort of thing went on outside the park's hours of operation. At times like now, in fact, with the dew still on the bedded flowers and snatches of birdsong drifting on the air…

Minnie suddenly bolted upright on her elbows. "Mickey…listen!" she said breathlessly. "Do you hear them?"

Mickey straightened up also, understanding. It _was_ birdsong they were hearing—not a recording to enhance ambiance (in that area, there wasn't one), but the real thing, an irreproducible mélange of finch chirps and sparrow twitters and even the multifarious calls of dueling mockingbirds…the first sign since the beginning of the adventure of any living thing in the park other than the characters themselves (and Walt, who was an honorary character). Amazed, the two scanned their surroundings, from trees to hedges to building eaves, in search of the singers…but saw nothing. The sound was so real that they could almost touch it, but without visible birds to produce it. It was _disembodied_ birdsong. Far from being as eerie as the word "disembodied" might imply, it was inspiring.

"What do you suppose it means?" asked Minnie.

"Maybe nothing," Mickey said, furrowing his brow. "It could be part of the memories. Everyone who ever walked through this area must have heard the birds, even if they didn't see them."

"Oh," said Minnie, crestfallen. "You're probably right."

"But _maybe_," Mickey continued, "it means all we've done up to this point is already having an effect. Maybe we've managed to bring Disneyland back toward reality just enough that a few 'real' things can slip through." He suddenly scrunched up his face and shook his head.

"Mickey, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Well, actually…no, I _am_ fine, but…I'll tell you about it in a little while."

Minnie was skeptical, but she put her concerns aside. "If you say so," she said.

"Anyway, it must be just about eight now—we should head back," Mickey went on. "That next crown isn't going to find itself, you know!"

"It would make things a lot easier for all of us if it did," Minnie commented. "Now, before we go back, there's just one thing I want to ask you."

"What's that, Minnie?"

"If I'm your _best_ girl, then who are all the others?"

Startled out of his wits, Mickey tripped over his own feet.

* * *

The assembly didn't take long—most of the characters already had a pretty good idea of their roles in the quest and were eager to begin. Mickey took capable volunteers to travel the park in groups of no less than three, watching out for Dispirations and dealing with them as needed. It was essentially the same thing the Three Good Fairies had been assigned to do in 1965, but on a much larger scale and with firm knowledge of the sort of thing they were looking for. Others were to stay and guard the courtyard, and if possible expand the haven it represented into more of Fantasyland. The vulnerable—children and non-combatants—were told to stay within an easy dash of the safeguarded area in case of an emergency, and not to leave its confines alone. 

And that was basically all there was to say. For all the weirdness inherent in the ongoing crisis, tackling it was going to be, at least for now, quite simple. There was a rousing group cheer, and then the characters went about their various tasks, leaving the Sensational Six to ponder how they would find the next crown.

They exited Fantasyland and stood in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, gazing up at the two crowns that had been placed.

"So which one are we looking for next?" asked Daisy. "The one with the Tinkerbell design?"

"No," said Minnie, pointing toward the pinnacle of the tallest tower. "It'll be the smaller one that goes up there, above the Rocket Crown."

"The Light Crown," Mickey said absently. The design of the crown commemorating Disneyland's third decade was pure sparkle—points shaped like the Blue Fairy float from the famous Electrical Parade, covered with rows and rows of glittering sapphires, alternated with blazing, imperial topaz-studded golden stars. If it had not been the smallest of the five crowns, and placed farthest from the ground, it would likely have blinded guests.

"Mickey, are ya feelin' okay?" Goofy asked sympathetically.

"He said something was bothering him earlier," Minnie noted. "Is now a good time, Mickey?"

"Oh, right!" said the other mouse, much more brightly. "It's nothing major. It's just that…I dreamed something last night, and it feels like it was important, but I can't remember what it was."

"If it feels like it was important, then it probably was," Daisy mused. "Do you remember _anything_?"

"Nothing comes to mind," Mickey said, scratching his head. "I just feel like I'm…missing something?"

"Can you think about it while we look for the crown?" Donald suggested. "I'm not sure we have time to stand around and grasp at straws."

"You're welcome to try," Minnie scoffed, "but I don't know how far you expect to get when we have no idea where to start. Maybe if we help Mickey remember his dream, it'll provide a clue."

"Hang on now, we might not need to," Goofy said, squinting up at the Castle tower and rubbing his chin. "Let's think about this logical-like. This crown we're lookin' for, the Light Crown, is the one made to look like the Electrical Parade, right?"

"That's right," said Mickey.

"The _Main Street_ Electrical Parade…?" Goofy continued slyly.

"Ri…right!" Mickey realized. "Goofy, you're a genius!"

"I am? A-hyuk! News to me!"

"So we should start looking on Main Street?" said Daisy. "Of course; why didn't I think of that?"

"'Cause you're not a genius like me!" Goofy beamed.

"Well? Let's _go_ already!" said Donald, tapping his foot.

"Hold your horses, Donald," said Mickey. "There's more. Not only do we have a good idea of where to start looking for the crown, but my dream—I just remembered—it had something to do with Main Street!"

"See?" said Minnie. "I told you the two would be connected."

"Something on Main Street…" Mickey continued to rack his brains to himself, rocking back and forth on his heels as though the motion would dislodge the memories from wherever they were stuck. "The train station? No…the Opera House? The Opera House! It was the Opera House!"

He gathered himself to break into a dead run, but Minnie caught his tail and held him fast. "Who exactly needs to hold their horses here, Mickey?" she teased. "There's no point in working yourself into a lather; the Opera House isn't going anywhere."

"Sorry," Mickey chuckled sheepishly. "You know how it is when you've been trying to remember something important for over an hour, and it suddenly comes to you. Let's go—all of us. Walking."

"Finally!" Donald cheered.

The six of them set out, crossing Central Plaza and continuing up Main Street proper. Before they had traversed even half the distance, Donald cried out in astonishment and darted onto the sidewalk. The others looked over to see him pressing his face and hands against the display window for the Crystal Arts shop.

"It's here!" Donald shouted, pointing emphatically at the merchandise display. "I found it!"

They hurried up to join the excited duck at the window. And there it was, sitting alongside the Swarovski figurines and blown-glass roses, just as if it had always been part of the merchandise. The gold and gems glinted invitingly under the display lights. Mickey found himself looking for the price tag.

"No way!" said Daisy. "That can't be the _real_ Light Crown—it would be too easy! Not that I have anything against easy, but come _on_—we've been looking for what, five minutes? It's gotta be some trick of Maleficent's."

"Possibly," Mickey considered. "It doesn't seem like her style…but then again, before yesterday, I wouldn't have thought the Dispirations seemed like her style."

"Maybe we should leave it for now," Minnie suggested, "and keep going with the original plan to visit the Opera House."

"But what if it _is_ the real one?" Donald protested. "We can't just leave it right out in the open where any…_thing_ might find it!"

"Right, so here's what we do," said Mickey, who had been thinking just that. "Minnie and I will go to the Opera House, while the rest of you stay here and keep an eye on the crown. Don't try to touch it just in case, and if you see any Dispirations…well, I trust you guys to handle things appropriately. Come on, Minnie." He started off again, at a brisker pace than before, paused to call back, "Good luck!" and then continued, with Minnie trotting behind him until she caught up.

The other four stood vigilant guard for about forty-five seconds, at which point Daisy said, "Well, I'm bored," sat down on the sidewalk curb, and began filing her fingernails. Pluto joined her, blowing a snort of indignation at having been left behind. Donald kept his eyes locked on the crown, as though daring it to disappear or turn out to be a trap and attack them or something. Only Goofy remained in high spirits. "Aw, cheer up, you two," he said to the curb-sitters. "I'm sure they won't be gone long. If you want, we could play a game to pass the time! Anyone up for 'I-Spy?'"

Behind him, inside the shop where none of them were focusing their attention, there was a slight movement on one of the merchandise shelves. Two small glass figurines—a lithe Oriental dragon and a unicorn with a gold-plated horn—shifted from their frozen poses, stretching their crystalline limbs. They traded a cagey glance before leaping from the shelf and darting out the shop's back way into the adjacent China Closet, where they reverted into the impressions of shadows that weren't quite there.

* * *

Mickey cringed slightly as he and Minnie entered the Opera House, not quite sure what to expect. Between time jumps, disturbed sleep, and everything else, his mental map of the park's history was a little jumbled…plus, he was secretly entertaining the possibility that Maleficent would have a ambush waiting for him inside. He relaxed almost immediately, though, upon seeing the waiting room exhibits. It was The Walt Disney Story: the multimedia celebration of Walt's life and work that had been installed in 1973. 

"Well, we're here," Minnie said. "Now what?"

"If I remember right," said Mickey somewhat absently, examining the contents of a display case, "my dream took place inside the theater. So I guess we wait for the doors to open."

It only stood to reason, Mickey realized, that they had to wait a few minutes. The show inside the theater lasted a good fifteen or twenty minutes, which allowed for only three or four brief opportunities per hour to arrive at the building just before it started. So most guests did have to wait, and hence that was the form their collective memories took. It occurred to Mickey that he should be making more proactive use of that bit of knowledge about what was going on. Instead of just noticing something and only then connecting the dots, he could start _predicting_ what they might find around the park, based on what would have been memorable to guests…

His musings were interrupted by the recorded announcement that the theater doors were about to open automatically. A moment later, they did, and he and Minnie entered the softly lit theater.

As they crossed the threshold, Mickey felt his fur stand at attention. Something was…not _wrong_, per se, but certainly _strange_ (although that had long since become a relative term). The stage curtain was drawn back when it should have been closed for the start of the show. And someone was on the stage—he could hear the telltale little sounds of an unobtrusive human presence. Motioning for Minnie to stay where she was, he silently moved further into the theater, where he could get a better look.

He relaxed at once when he saw that it was only Abe. _Of course—what was I thinking?_

Such is Disneyland's fame that even some of its individual attractions have garnered international renown. Six Flags as a chain might be the first name in thrills, but none of its individual roller coasters have the instant recognizability of Space Mountain. People who have never set foot within a hundred miles of a Disney theme park will nonetheless groan with familiarity upon hearing the strains of "It's a Small World (After All)." Even the humble Mad Tea Party, close cousin to the tilt-a-whirl of any given traveling carnival, is well known.

And then there is "Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln." In its way, it might be the most famous of them all—not by name, but in that people who know nothing else about the Disney parks know that you can go there and see a robotic version of Abraham Lincoln deliver a speech. In the jaded Twenty-First Century, such a concept comes across as quaint, a source of humor. But people remember what makes them laugh.

Those who see it in person are usually too impressed to be amused. The Lincoln figure is among the best that audio-animatronic technology has to offer. He may not be as exciting as a carousing pirate or hitchhiking ghost, but he gives the impression of being more subtly alive than either. He can stand up from his chair and sit down again. He periodically checks his notes and shifts his weight from foot to foot as he speaks. His face is so intricately mobile that the deaf have been known to read his lips. Once in a while, someone is fooled into thinking him flesh-and-blood—an actor, or even, in a moment of exceptionally scattered brain, the genuine article.

That kind of thing needs no spell tampering with the fabric of reality to bring it from a mere semblance of life to real life. Abe had been welcomed to the Disney Family not long after his debut in 1965. He mostly kept to himself—being the likeness of a real person from history kept him grounded, limited his personality and actions in a way that the other characters were not subject to, and that resulted in a certain distance between him and them. Still, Mickey typically found the time for a visit every couple of months or so, to talk over cups of coffee about current events.

At the moment, Abe didn't seem to have any coffee prepared as he bent over his cluttered writing desk, scribbling away with a mahogany fountain pen. But Mickey had a doozy of a current event to talk about…briefly, of course—the others were still waiting at Crystal Arts.

"Hiya, Abe!" he called brightly, waving Minnie over.

"Well, hello, Mickey," the former President greeted him, looking up from his work. "Perhaps you can help me sort out a little matter of wording here. Which do you think sounds better: 'government by the people and for the people,' or 'government _of_ the people, by the people, and for the people?'"

"Definitely the second one," said Mickey, who had had this conversation before. (One of Abe's limitations was that he was perpetually in the process of writing the Gettysburg Address.)

"And drop the 'and' for closer parallelism between the phrases," Minnie added.

Abe wrote something down and crossed something else out. "Yes, you're right," he said. "I thank the both of you. So, then, Mickey, Minnie—what's the occasion?"

"Nothing very pleasant, I'm afraid," said Minnie. "We're actually not here to chat. Disneyland's in big trouble, and we're on a quest to fix it. Mickey came here trying to remember a dream he had that might give us some clues."

"Well, best of luck to you," said Abe. "If you need anything, I'll be right here." He chuckled. "You know, I've missed being able to say that. It _is_ good to be back."

That last bit had Mickey puzzled until he remembered what year it was. The Walt Disney Story had displaced "Great Moments" at first. Abe had been stuck in mothballs for over two years, until the summer of '75, when it was decided to let both presentations share the Opera House. Abe would be the theater's chief occupant until…well, until 2005, when an all-new exhibit and show about Disneyland's history would take over the building as part of the Happiest Homecoming on Earth. Something about that made Mickey feel slightly guilty…

But he had to move on in any case. Turning away from the stage, he let his eyes sweep the theater, hoping to jog his memory. A few flashes came to him in rapid succession: green leaves, shining gold, and Walt Disney's face under Abe Lincoln's trademark silk top hat. _Are you sure you have everything you need, Mickey?…_

"Okay, I think I've got it," he said, panting a little with the surprise of the sudden recollections. "It's about the crown, and something to do with Adventureland."

"Adventureland?" Minnie repeated. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure," Mickey replied. "I can't think of any other place in the park that has tree leaves bigger than my ears. Come on, let's get back to the others. Thanks for putting up with us, Abe!"

"Any time!" the figure on the stage responded with a perfunctory wave as the two mice exited the theater via the doors opposite to those by which they had entered.

"Adventureland…" Minnie said again as they stepped from the Opera House back onto Town Square. "It doesn't make sense to me. Did you dream that the _real_ Light Crown was there or something?"

"Yes and no," Mickey admitted.

"Let me guess: you'll explain when we're all together again so you don't have to repeat yourself?"

"You've got me figured out, all right," Mickey confirmed with a smile.

They picked up their pace, rounding the corner shop and stepping onto the main thoroughfare. Close to the far end, Daisy spotted them immediately; they heard her half-exasperated "_Fi_nally!" She elaborated once they got closer: "I was just about to _pass out_ from boredom!"

Mickey couldn't help himself. "Oh, good, so there was no trouble, then." Daisy started to snap a retort, but Mickey went on before she could get anything out. "Anyway, I remembered what I needed to know." He took an appraising look at the Light Crown in the display window.

"So _is_ that the real Light Crown?" asked Minnie.

"Probably, but it won't do us any good to try taking it," said Mickey. "Remember the first two? They weren't tangible objects at first. We had to merge them with crowns belonging to characters before we could even touch them."

There was a brief round of Oh Yeah Of Course.

"Yeah, I forgot about it too, up until a few minutes ago. So we need to go get a material crown to merge with this one," Mickey continued. "The only problem is, we're starting to run out of crowns we might be able to use. We didn't regain many characters in the last time jump, and of those we did, all the crowns belong to…well, villains. Can you imagine asking Prince John to loan us his?"

Daisy snorted. "Not a chance. Technically, it's not even his crown—it's King Richard's. But if Robin Hood and Little John can't get it away from him, I don't think we'd fare much better."

"Exactly," said Mickey. "Then there's King Leonidas…but the last time I tried to talk to him, he roared in my ears and then beaned me with a soccer ball. And I was only asking him if he wanted to come to the Make-A-Wish Foundation fund-raiser. I hate to think how he'd react if I asked for his crown."

"Who's left?" Donald wondered, scratching his head.

Mickey made a face that was somewhere between a wry smile and a grimace. "King Louie."

"But he doesn't even wear a crown," Goofy said. "Does he?"

"He keeps one around to 'prove' he's really a king," Minnie said, making the same face as Mickey. "It's not what I'd call a proper royal crown—for one thing, he made it himself out of leaves and banana peels. But it's probably our best option…and I need to talk to Louie anyway. I never got the word through to him last night about what's going on."

That was when the explosion occurred.

* * *

While all the discussion had been going on, Pluto had caught hints on the breeze of an approaching noise—a faint buzzing sound—and had spotted a small object zipping along the ground from the direction of the Emporium. It followed a roughly zigzag course, and when it got close enough, Pluto saw that was an old-fashioned tin toy: a wagon-mounted cannon with a wind-up motor, the barrel loaded with a red-white-and-blue rocket. It stopped about a foot away from him and sat there, fizzing quietly. So he did what any reasonably intelligent dog would do—he leaned closer and dipped his head to sniff at it. 

And that was when the cannon fired, ramming the little firecracker right into Pluto's tender nose, where it exploded in an eye-piercing, ear-shattering display of daytime fireworks. The tawny dog's howl of pain and affront could barely be heard over the cacophony.

"What's going on?" Daisy screeched, finding herself suddenly in the middle of what felt like a war zone.

"We're under attack!" Goofy exclaimed, flinging himself on the ground. "Duck and cover! Stop, drop, and roll! Call for backup!"

The onslaught soon died down, but by that time, more toy cannons were rolling up. "Uh…guys…" Donald said with a nervous, rising tone. The cannons began firing, engulfing them all in blinding, deafening, smoky bursts.

"They must be Dispirations!" Minnie deduced, dodging rockets.

"_These_ things?" Daisy said incredulously. "But they don't look like Dispirations!"

"Dispirations can look like _anything_!" Mickey reminded her.

"Who cares what they are? They're tryin' to turn us into crispy critters!" Goofy wailed.

"Good point—run!" said Mickey. "Head for Adventureland!

Kicking at their tiny attackers and flailing their way through the gunpowdery smoke, the Sensational Six fled for Central Plaza, veering sharply left toward the bamboo arch that marked the entrance to Adventureland. Donald looked back briefly, only to emit a "Wak—!" of fright. "Mickey, they're _chasing_ us!"

"Are they catching up to—yikes! Never mind," said Mickey as a firework narrowly missed his head. An instant later, it exploded, showering him with "embers" that paradoxically seemed to freeze rather than burn, that sucked light _in_ rather than giving it off. "Definitely Dispirations!" he said with a shudder. "Keep going!" They passed through the gateway and into Adventureland.

"We can't keep running forever," Minnie said.

"I've got an idea," Mickey told her, locking his eyes on the façade for the Jungle Cruise ride just ahead. Hadn't he just been thinking he should start using what he knew about Disneyland's situation to his advantage?

A few of the Dispirations had fallen behind when they had entered Adventureland, but those that remained had changed their forms without missing a beat, and more were joining them, trickling out of the shops, planters, and miscellaneous nooks and crannies. They wore such shapes as rubbery-looking cobras, malevolent Tiki idols, and orchids whose petals snapped like toothy jaws. That bought them a small margin of safety—although the new creatures _looked_ more menacing than the toy cannons, they could not attack at a distance.

Mickey kept up his pace until he was exactly parallel with the entrance to the Jungle Cruise's queue bullpen, then shouted "In here!" and turned a hard left into the labyrinth of poles and railings. The rest of the Sensational Six were barely able to react in time, but they scrambled in after him.

"Are you sure this was such a good idea?" asked Minnie. "We can't move as quickly in here, and I'm certain some of those things can just hop over or under the railings and cut through. And what happens when we reach the dock?"

"Trust me; I know what I'm doing," said Mickey.

The next few minutes were almost farcical—the Sensational Six threading their way through the switchbacks like obedient guests, a swarm of small but deadly jungle creatures close on their heels. Once, when one of the biting orchids got too close to Donald, bringing up the rear, he had the presence of mind to lash out at it with a length of chain. The spring-loaded clip at the end walloped the flower, tearing off half of its saw-edged petals, and Donald nodded with satisfaction as the Dispiration dissolved back into shadowy mist.

Finally, they reached the end of the queue, only a few steps ahead of their pursuers. Mickey bit his lip—one of the Jungle Cruise boats, the _Zambezi Miss_, was idling at the dock all right, and if he had figured things correctly, it would leave as soon as they were on board. "Get on!" he urged the others, falling back a short distance himself so that he could make sure they were all safely aboard before he hopped into the boat himself.

A few Dispirations were too close for comfort. Mickey snatched up a seat cushion from inside the boat and fended them off until the boat began to grumble and move, then jumped the short distance. He stumbled upon landing and wound up in a sprawled heap with the cushion.

"Whoa, there!" said a semi-sarcastic voice. "I always enjoy a good stunt show, but I should inform you that there was another boat _right behind_ this one." Despite his smarting joints, Mickey sighed happily—his gamble had paid off.

So far in the adventure, the Sensational Six had not encountered any Cast Members. As they had realized the previous night, this was because most guests didn't take much notice of the Cast Members—not enough notice, at any rate, for the typical hard-working employee to leave a noticeable imprint on the collective memories of the park. But some Cast Members are memorable. Some, in fact, are an integral part of the attractions they operated.

The most outstanding of these are the Jungle Cruise skippers.

"Anyway," the semi-sarcastic voice continued as Mickey collected himself and took a seat next to Minnie, "welcome aboard the world-famous Jungle Cruise. My name is Joe, and I'll be your skipper and guide for your voyage down the Rivers of Adventure. Please keep your hands, arms, feet, legs, heads, tails, and any and all other body parts you'd like to hang onto _inside_ the boat, and remain seated at all times unless directed otherwise from the cockpit."

Joe was an entirely typical skipper—a gangly youth of about eighteen, neither plain nor handsome, with wavy brown hair and a light, somewhat freckled suntan. Of course he was entirely typical. He probably wasn't an individual person, but a composite of _all_ the Jungle Cruise skippers who had worked in the mid-Seventies. 1975, in any case. Certainly the summer of 1975. And in those days, the hiring standards were a lot narrower. Any given skipper had an excellent chance of being a gangly youth of about eighteen, neither plain nor handsome…though hair and skin tone varied.

Minnie leaned over to Mickey. "Did you _know_ he would be here?" she whispered.

"Not exactly," Mickey replied. "But this works great for us—we can relax a bit until the boat gets to King Louie's part of the jungle."

"Ahem, excuse me?" Joe wisecracked. "Do you have something you want to say to the whole class?"

"Why, sure—I was just telling my best girl here that I think you're doing a bang-up job as skipper."

"Yeah, nice try, sir, but my keister's for sitting, not for kissing. Why don't you just pipe down and let me do my job? I'm trying to guide these nice people!"

"Guide away, Joe," said Mickey. "Guide away."

The _Zambezi Miss_ chugged its way along the murky tropical river.

To Be Continued…

* * *

A/N: Strangely enough, I don't have much to say about this chapter, except that it's so nice to have my inspiration up and running again! Thanks once again for your patience, and thanks to everyone who has reviewed! 


	19. Chapter 19

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 19: Jungle Jazz and Jeopardy

It was cool under the canopy of tropical trees. It would have been peaceful, if not for the constant chatter of Joe, doing his job.

"Just up ahead is an ancient Cambodian temple, where it looks like a full-grown Bengal tiger has moved in! You know, a Bengal tiger is capable of jumping an astounding _twenty-five_ feet…but not to worry. We're only fifteen feet away—he'll jump right over us."

The thing was, it—the animatronic tiger—looked like it actually might. Jump, that is. It wasn't that it was pacing or roaring; it merely stood, bobbing its head and growling softly, just like always. But its eyes were _alive_.

"And here we have a family of deadly king cobras. King cobras are the _largest_ venomous snakes in the world…which is, of course, why they were named after Elvis."

Mickey sucked at the inside of his cheek. _Elvis…_ The old jokes were even worse than he remembered. Not that the current ones were any better, of course, but at least they were _current_. From a 21st-Century perspective, any reference to Elvis Presley was, in addition to any other deficits, automatically horribly dated. That didn't change just because the bearer of said perspective was time-traveling.

Now they were passing a group of crocodiles—not even animatronics, these, but mere models, incapable of movement. That, in fact, was the theme of Joe's corny jokes about them…until an unfamiliar swift motion on the riverbank seized Mickey's attention.

"Whoa, look at that!" said the skipper without missing a beat. "I guess they're a little more rambunctious than usual today. At this point, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to remind you to keep your hands _and_ arms _inside_ the boat at _all_ times…we don't want another Captain Hook incident."

Mickey swiveled his head to keep an eye on the crocodile as the _Zambezi Miss_ left it behind. It wasn't doing anything now…but it had obviously done _something_ a moment ago. Mickey was pretty sure it had snapped its jaws at a passing bug or something of the sort. To a mouse, certain things are unmistakable even in peripheral vision, and the gleam of a predator's teeth is one of them.

The boat continued to chug along the river, emerging from the ruins into the spacious Elephants' Bathing Pool. And now there was no question but that the Jungle Cruise, like the Submarine Voyage before it, had come to life—not as abruptly or dramatically as the other attraction, but just as surely. The elephants were real live elephants, splashing and spraying and frolicking in the water on their huge, slow scale (and if there is anything more mind-boggling than elephants flirting, it's elephants frolicking). Some of the smaller ones were swimming, snorkeling through their trunks as they paddled their way around basins and cataracts whose murkiness was no longer attributable to artificial green dye.

And as the boat glided through the scene, drawing the curiosity of the placid beasts, the air that wafted over it was suddenly hot, heavy with moisture and with the intensely organic, not-quite-foul odor of a rainforest ecology in full bloom. Clouds of gnats danced over the open water, and larger insects—mantises, horned beetles, dazzling butterflies—could be seen perching and creeping on the tree trunks and branches. Here and there in the river, the blackish or olive brown or silvery backs of fishes were briefly visible as they surfaced to gulp down unsuspecting water bugs.

And everywhere, everywhere, coming from all directions in a magnificent, multi-layered chorus, were the sounds. There were the cries of birds, of course—in numbers and variety to make the twitters that had so thrilled Mickey and Minnie earlier that morning sound like a lone cricket in an empty parking garage. But not all the creatures that sing in the jungles of the world have feathers, and among the clamor could also be heard the hoots and screeches of monkeys, the chirruping barks of agitated squirrels, a whole collection of peculiar sounds that put one in mind of a carpentry workshop but were actually the mating calls of various species of frogs, and, underlying all this, a constant low drone indicating the presence of yet more insects.

None of this seemed to strike Joe as remotely surprising; his only reaction as the _Zambezi Miss_ entered the Elephants' Bathing Pool was to throttle the boat's engine for a minute in order to tell a few cheaply humorous stories about the pachyderms before continuing. But Joe, of course, was not any one real Jungle Cruise skipper from 1975, but a composite of all of them, drawn from the memories of all those who had ridden the attraction that year. In that sense, he was technically as fictional as everything else about the adventure, and for him to be startled by the change would make about as much sense as one of the elephants puzzling over why it was no longer an animatronic.

Mickey, for his part, was just as amazed at the transformation as the rest of the Sensational Six…but he had too much else on his mind to be very demonstrative about it, or to pay much heed to the gasps of wonder around him. Besides, he had experienced just about all the elephants he could handle the previous evening. On top of that, the boat was rapidly approaching the spot at which they would need to disembark in order to reach King Louie's palace, and that involved its own set of challenges. So while the others spun their heads from sight to sight, he kept his eyes firmly on the river ahead of them.

His main concern was how to get to shore. Swimming was probably not an option—the near-disaster of Donald's exploratory dip in the Rivers of America, back in 1955, was all too fresh in his mind, and while this part of the jungle river was not subject to powerful currents, it surely had hazards of its own. Leeches, for instance, or water vipers. Closer to the banks where the water was shallow, its murkiness might be hiding patches of quicksand, and in this jungle of the popular imagination, it _wouldn't_ be the realistic kind that could only get you up to your chest before you achieved buoyancy.

Of course, he realized, he could always just ask Joe to steer the boat over. That was the problem with a perilous adventure—after a point, you started to take the peril for granted and assume that there were no simple solutions to be had. As the _Zambezi Miss_ exited the Bathing Pool, he decided to go for it.

"That's really fascinating, Joe," Mickey said, interrupting whatever it was that Joe was saying about the plants of the rain forest (probably nothing, if he remembered this part of the script correctly), "but I have an important favor to ask of you."

"Sir, please hold all your questions until the end of the tour," said Joe, feigning severe annoyance. "I don't know what things are like where you come from, but here in the uncivilized wilderness, we don't interrupt our skipper when he's trying to educate us."

"I know, and I normally try not to be rude, but this really can't wait. You see, we need to get off the boat here."

Joe laughed nervously. "You're welcome to it, sir, if you don't mind swimming with Indonesian Vampire Worms."

"We _do_ mind," Mickey said patiently. "That's why I'm asking for the favor. Will you please take the boat closer to that bank so we can get off safely?"

There was a pause, during which something in the water to the right of the boat went _gloop_, and a few bubbles rose and burst. Joe stared blankly at Mickey. Then he said, "Wait…you're serious? You actually want to get off the boat, right here, and march off into…that?" He pointed at the menacingly dense foliage to the left of the _Zambezi Miss_. "There's no accounting for taste, I guess. Only the thing is, I'm not authorized to deviate from the predetermined course set down by the Jungle Cruise Touring Office."

Something gray and fleshy rose on the right side of the boat, unseen by any of its passengers. There was a snuffling noise, and the gray lump disappeared

"Oh, come on, Joe," said Minnie. "Who's going to know? We're the only passengers you've got this trip."

"You'd be surprised," Joe hedged. Before he had a chance to go further, however, the gray thing returned, emerged to a length of roughly three feet…and let fly a jet of tepid water directly at the head of Donald Duck. With pinfeather accuracy.

Donald emitted a squawk of startled rage and hopped up onto his seat, bouncing on his heels with fists at the ready, spoiling for a fight, while the others stared in mute shock.

"I saw that, Fido!" Joe scolded, shutting off the boat's engine altogether. "Stop hiding this instant!" The head of a full-grown Indian elephant rose from the water in a manner that could only be described as coy, prodding at the boat railings with its trunk and even batting its eyelashes a little.

Donald made as if to lunge at the creature, but Daisy's sympathetic hand on his arm stopped him.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is my good friend Fido," Joe went on. "He's a mischievous little squirt, isn't he?" Then he started. "I just got a really great idea! What if Fido here carries you over to the bank? That way you get what you want, and no one back at Dispatch can accuse me of taking the boat off-course. What do you think, Fido? Will you do that for these nice people?"

The elephant trumpeted happily and slapped the water with its trunk, splashing all the occupants of the boat.

"Great!" said Joe, making a token attempt at shaking the dampness out of his sleeves. "And if anyone asks why I let you get out of the boat in the first place, I can say you all overpowered me. Yeah, that's the ticket."

"Sounds terrific!" said Mickey. Without further ado, he climbed over the railing and took up a perch on the pachyderm's head. "Well? Aren't the rest of you coming?"

With little "why not" shrugs, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy followed suit, finding comfortable spots on Fido's back (though Goofy, true to form, slipped in the process and got soaked up to the waist). Pluto, stymied by his lack of hands and upright posture, made a plaintive little whine and was rewarded when the elephant coiled its trunk around his body, holding him up well free of the water. Daisy, however, hung back, resting her hands on the rail and wincing.

"Are you sure this is a good idea? That elephant was just underwater!"

Mickey was puzzled. "So?"

"_So_, have you taken a look at this water lately? There are _larvae_ living in it!"

"Oh, Daisy, now's not the time to be squeamish," Minnie scolded her. "Just get on already." She leaned over, grabbed Daisy's hand, and bodily yanked her out of the boat and onto the back of the beast, eliciting a yelp of surprise from the startled duck.

"Thanks for your help, Joe," said Mickey. "Don't worry—we'll be back soon. Hup-hup, Fido!"

As the four-ton beast plowed through the water toward land, Joe heaved a sigh. "I hope I don't get written up for this."

* * *

The Queen of Hearts was bored. She had thought—because she had definitely heard him _say_ so—that Mickey Mouse was going to meet with her in the morning in order to work out a way for her to communicate with him while she was spying on the other Villains. But then what did the little rodent do? He went traipsing off somewhere else without so much as a by-Your-Majesty's-leave, that's what. It was _annoying_. And it left her with nothing useful to do.

So, in the best tradition of the idle rich, she wandered around the Fantasyland courtyard and interfered with the hard work of others, generally by watching them for about twenty seconds before loudly clearing her throat and making the most mind-blowingly ignorant suggestions as to what they were doing wrong and how to improve it. She advised the Dwarfs to use pickaxes for their carpentry instead of claw hammers, "since you're so much more used to them," and recommended that the elephants take up yoga so that their trunks would be more flexible. She also averred that leaving the children mostly to their own devices was detrimental to efficiency and good moral character and proposed that they be put to work somehow, or at least made to attend school (a prospect which caused two of the Lost Boys to faint with horror). But when she starting darkly eyeing the Dalmatian puppies and muttering about newspaper, that was the last straw.

Lady Kluck, who had the right combination of traits to confront the bombastic Wonderland monarch (the chutzpah to do it, and a title of nobility so the Queen would consider her worth listening to), cornered her in one of the nooks of Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

"It's like this, Your Majesty. You're gettin' in everyone's way and annoying the livin' daylights out of 'em, and it's got to stop. Didn't Mickey give you something to do?"

"_In theory_, yes," the Queen huffed. "But then he left without giving us the rest of our instructions! One can't blame _us_ for being at loose ends."

"Y'ought to have spoken up when he was givin' us all the rundown earlier, then," said Lady Kluck emphatically. "In the meantime, you'll just have to figure something out on your own, like the rest of us. But we can't have you busybodyin' around like you have been. Good day to you." And with that, she bobbed a token curtsey and went about her business, leaving the Queen slightly flustered but certainly paying attention.

Much as it galled her to be called out by someone who occupied a lower rung of the royal hierarchy than herself (that is to say, almost anyone), she had to admit in the privacy of her own head that the chicken was probably right: she _should_ just get on with things, with or without a specific directive from Mickey. It wasn't like she _needed_ supervision, after all—what kind of monarch would she be if she needed that?

So, then. Communication. Right. She could handle that…in a way that none of the other Villains would question, even. She gathered her skirts and, with a sweeping stride that let all onlookers know without question who was in command, set out for her own royal aviary.

* * *

For the fourth time in as many minutes, a branch swung back and Minnie got a faceful of waxy, bold green leaves. "Oops! Sorry, Minnie," Goofy apologized, also for the fourth time in as many minutes.

"We should have brought—pfuh!—machetes or something," Minnie observed, spitting out foliage.

"Where would we have gotten any?" said Daisy, who had wisely elected to stay behind her friend.

"Good point."

"We should be just about there," said Mickey as they emerged from the tangle into a clearing about the size of a two-car garage. "I recognize the terrain. Such as it is." He pointed at a low hillock that proved, on closer examination, to be a heap of discarded banana skins, long since blackened, half-desiccated, and finally overgrown with wild grass and creepers.

Pluto inched closer to the mound, sniffing until he caught the scent of it full-blast and snorted with distaste. Donald made a low whistle. "That's _revolting_," he opined.

"It could be worse," said Goofy philosophically. "At least banana skins are biodegradable."

"Thank you, Professor Environmentalist," said Donald.

Suddenly, the air erupted with a cacophony of hoots and screeches, and roughly a dozen hairy figures—rhesus monkeys—dropped out of the trees overhead to surround the Sensational Six. Laughing raucous, they slapped the ground with their palms and curled their rubbery lips to reveal sharp canine teeth.

"Easy," said Mickey. "It's just the advance guard. Hi there, fellas."

The monkeys looked back and forth at each other, whispering and chittering. The largest of them, a dark brown one with a raggedy right ear, stepped forward. "Hi there yourself, Mouse Man. You six are trespassing in the territory of His Swingin' Majesty, King Louie, and as such, can be prosecuted to the full extent of the Law of the Jungle. Or didn't you know that?"

"Oh, we're not trespassing," said Mickey. "We came to tell King Louie something important, and ask him for a small favor."

"His Swingin' Highness will be the judge of that," the monkey said smugly. "Take 'em in, boys."

Five sniggering monkeys seized the bipedal members of the group by the wrists, while a sixth attached a length of vine to Pluto's collar, and the primates began frog-marching the Sensational Six toward their destination.

"Mickey, I don't like this," Minnie whispered. "It's not like King Louie to be this strict with visitors. And it's not like the monkeys to be this…organized."

"I know," Mickey replied. "Remember what I said earlier: play it by ear."

By and by, rhythmic sounds emanating from somewhere in the distance became audible, and shortly resolved themselves into the lively strains of a jazz tune. Pushing through two more layers of trees and lianas brought the group to the edge of the sprawling ruins where King Louie held court. The imperious orangutan lounged on his crumbling throne, peeling bananas with his feet while his hands drummed endlessly on the armrests, the backrest, and the heads of any monkeys who were close enough, providing a counterpoint for his scat singing.

This was normal. While Louie was present, his ersatz palace never lacked for energetic background music, often performed by the monarch himself…but on this particular occasion, Mickey realized as the group drew nearer to the dais on which the throne sat, something was wrong. It was subtle and hard to track (he probably wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been studied in music himself), but it seemed that every few bars, Louie's usually impeccable sense of rhythm faltered, just a tiny bit, and there was an instant where the music _wobbled_, only to return to its normal measured cadence in the next instant.

It took Louie a couple of minutes to take notice of the Sensational Six as they were shoved before his throne, but when he did, his face broke into a huge orangutan grin. With an exclamation of "Hey, it's Mickey!", he twirled around on the seat and improvised a quick finish to his jam session, then vaulted down and took a bow. The monkeys erupted in exuberant applause. The Six found their hands released and, with little "when in Rome" shrugs, joined in the accolade.

"A-thank you, a-thank you," said Louie. Then he addressed Mickey directly. "If it isn't my main mouse! What brings you to this part of the jungle?"

Mickey didn't respond right away, distracted by something that was just becoming audible as the monkeys' ovation died away. Not all of the unruly primates had been clapping and cheering: a number of them crouched in nooks and atop broken pillars around the dais, humming and warbling wordlessly, keeping the entertainment going. The really arresting thing, though, was that they seemed to have the same problem with the tune that their king had been having with the rhythm—that is, every so often they would just miss the note, resulting in a split second of almost subconscious discord. If Louie hadn't noticed—as apparently he hadn't, since his usual response to off-key singing was to smack the offending monkey upside the head—then something was wrong.

Someone nudged him. "Mickey, you're zoning out," he heard Minnie hiss.

"You didn't come all this way just to ignore me, now, did you?" Louie was saying. "'Cause that's just crazy, cuz."

"Has everything been all right around here? I mean lately," said Mickey, stumbling slightly over the words. The periodic sour notes tapped at the edge of his awareness like some kind of sonic Chinese water torture.

"Everything's been just peachy keen. Banana-y keen, even," Louie replied, plucking a banana from a bunch, squeezing it right out of its peel, and catching it in his rubbery lips, all in one smooth motion. "Why do you ask?" he continued around a mouthful of fruit.

"Because terrible things are happening in the park!" Minnie put in. "We came to warn you…and to ask for a favor from you to help put a stop to it."

The crooning monkeys raised their volume a tad. Pluto whined faintly. "Terrible things, you say?" Louie repeated. "Well, never you worry your pretty little head about me. King Louie has got everything under control."

"I doubt that," Donald muttered, eyeballing the singers.

"Oh, we're not worried about _you_," said Mickey hurriedly. "We know _you_ can take care of your own kingdom. But the rest of Disneyland is…well, that's why we need a favor from you."

"Well, lay it on me," said Louie, heaving himself back onto his throne and peeling another banana. "What can the King of the Jungle do for America's Number-One Mouse?"

The singing monkeys leaned in from their perches without missing a badly placed beat in their unstable melody…which suddenly got noticeably more unstable.

Mickey inhaled deeply, exhaled hard, and made the request. "We need to borrow your crown."

Louie's face hardened slightly and he leaned over on one armrest, scratching his head with one hand and rubbing his chin with the other as he mulled it over. The wordless music from the monkeys dropped in volume again, but at the same time increased in intensity, becoming more penetrating.

Minnie suddenly seized Mickey's arm, gripping so hard that he could feel her fingernails through her gloves. "Look at his eyes!" came her frightened whisper.

Louie's posture on the throne spoke of cogitation, but the expression in his eyes was one of alarming blankness—unfocused and a bit glazed, the pupils slightly dilating and contracting in time to the monkeys' unnerving singing. As for the droning monkeys themselves…Mickey swiftly realized that they weren't monkeys at all.

"They're Dispirations. Get ready to run," he said, just loudly enough for the rest of the Sensational Six to hear him. "On second thought, Louie," he added much more loudly, "I guess this is a bad time for you. So we'll just be going now."

"I forbid it!" Louie bellowed suddenly, drawing himself up to his full height on his seat. "You vile trespassers ain't goin' _anywhere_! Seize them!"

"_Now!_" Mickey yelled, and the Six scattered, just dodging the hands of the monkeys—real monkeys, who might or might not have been under the same pernicious influence as their king, but who were absolutely loyal to him in any case—who darted forward to grab them.

A fair approximation of chaos ensued, with the Six dashing to and fro across the temple ruins, trying to regroup with one another while simultaneously avoiding the clutches of King Louie, the monkeys, and the simian Dispirations. It was a bad situation—their pursuers greatly outnumbered them and were far more nimble. More than that, they had no qualms about using all the force at their disposal to capture their targets, while Mickey and his cohorts were reluctant to respond in kind. There was no way to tell on an instant's notice whether the shaggy, limber-limbed creature springing out from behind a pillar was a mindless and soulless Dispiration…or a fellow character, misled and fundamentally innocent.

It was Goofy, of all people, who enabled the first stage of their escape, taking advantage of his gangly height to scale a massive block of stone too tall for any of the others—even the agile monkeys—to climb on their own. Then it was just a matter of waiting for each of his friends in turn to pass close enough for him to swoop down with one hand and haul them up too. It wasn't a huge improvement in their circumstances, as the block was isolated from other structures and trees and was soon surrounded by hostile monkeys (and faux-monkeys), but it bought them time to think.

"Okay, now what?" said Daisy.

Mickey scanned their surroundings. It looked like King Louie's entire court was encircling the block, jeering and threatening. And that meant, Mickey realized, that _most_ of the temple was free of danger. If they could somehow get past the monkeys, they would have a clear path out of the ruins and could lose their attackers in the dense jungle on the way back to the river. But that depended on them reaching the dense jungle before the faster primates caught up with them… That was the real issue: speed.

He motioned the others into a huddle. "We need a decoy. Someone's going to have to go back down there and draw the monkeys' attention while the rest of us get away."

"Oh, no you don't," said Minnie. "This is _not_ going to be a repeat of the Submarine Lagoon."

"Don't worry, Minnie," Mickey chuckled. "There aren't going to be any martyrs here. It'll have to be someone who can run fast enough to keep from getting caught, and who can easily find the rest of us afterward." He paused meaningfully, and then looked directly at Pluto. "What do you think, boy? Are ya up to it?"

Pluto made a horrified gasp and tried to duck his head into his own shoulders. Lower lip trembling, he lifted one forepaw and pointed at himself questioningly.

"Come on, Pluto, ol' pal," Mickey cajoled. "I know you can do it. You don't have to _fight_ the monkeys—just lead them on for a while. Then shake them off and meet up with us back at the boat."

With a snort of resignation, Pluto walked to the edge of the block and peered down at the swarming simians. He gulped nervously, and then ducked to one side as one of the beasts hurled a half-eaten mango at him.

"Let's help him out a little," Minnie suggested. She strode to the opposite side of the block, set her arms akimbo and her face in an uncharacteristic sneer, and called down, "Hey, you! What's the matter—forget how to climb? I thought you were monkeys, not _sloths_!"

"Well, now, that's just _rude_!" one monkey shouted. "Why don't you come down here and say that?" another added.

"Ha! Maybe I will!" Minnie scoffed. "You don't scare me!"

Seeing what she was getting at, Donald joined her, razzing the simian throng with joyful flippancy. Goofy and Daisy followed suit. Soon the monkeys were no longer heckling the Six but hopping mad, and those who had been covering the other three sides of the stone block moved around to where Minnie and Daisy were blowing mocking kisses, and Donald was prying up little bits of the eroding rock to flick down at them, and Goofy was dangling his legs within tantalizing reach before yanking them back up again. Now it was easy to tell the real monkeys from the Dispirations—the latter showed no reaction to the taunting, though they certainly reacted to the presence of the taunters.

And it was easy for Mickey to help Pluto spring down on the far side of the block. The dog hit the ground running and yelping with terror so loudly that the monkeys could not possibly fail to notice…and didn't.

"Hey, look at that!"

"It's that Mickey Mouse's dog!"

"It was all just a big distraction so they could slip out the back way!"

"Well, let's go after 'em!"

And just like that, the whole hooting, screeching mass of them charged after Pluto, leaving the other five free to climb down and hustle out of the ruins unnoticed. (King Louie's monkeys are clever, and they are cunning, but they're not very _smart._) As they dove into the concealing jungle undergrowth, it occurred to Mickey to wonder where Louie was in all this. He risked a look behind him and saw the orangutan lounged once more on his throne, with two Dispirations, one on either side of him, mesmerizing him with their disturbing, off-kilter song.

* * *

"It's _also_—I don't know if I've ever mentioned this to you, Fido—it's also bad for repeat business. It's one thing when it's just you and me, and this shirt's only cotton anyway. But what if I had been a paying customer wearing silk?"

The elephant made a trumpet that sounded remarkably like a chuckle and lifted his trunk, ready to fire again, when there was a series of crashing noises, and Mickey and his friends burst out of the foliage along the riverbank, looking as panicked as if their were a tiger chasing them.

"Start the boat, Joe, start the boat!" Donald commanded.

"They could be right behind us!" Daisy added by way of explanation.

"Wait…where's Pluto?" wondered Mickey. Fortunately, in the next instant, his faithful dog came charging out of the tangled vegetation several yards upstream. He didn't even stop when he reached the water, but plunged on in and dog-paddled straight to the _Zambezi Miss_, leaving the others to wait for Fido to reach the bank and pick them up. On the plus side, by the time they were all on board, Joe had the engine running and was ready to move on.

"I must say," he said conversationally. "You ladies and gentlemen certainly don't shy away from real adventure! So, where to next?"

"Just get us back to the dock as quickly as you can, Joe," Mickey sighed, collapsing onto the bench. He stroked Pluto's head. "You did great, pal. I knew I could count on you."

"Well, that was an unqualified disaster," said Daisy with justifiable disgust. "We didn't get the crown, we almost got mauled by monkeys, and King Louie's been brainwashed by Dispirations!"

"What are we gonna do, Mickey?" asked Goofy plaintively. "We need that crown so we can get the other crown so we can save Disneyland!"

"I'm sorry, everyone," said Minnie. "If I hadn't turned back last night, maybe I would have gotten to Louie before the Dispirations did."

"And maybe you would have fallen into their clutches right along with him," said Mickey. "We can spend all day playing 'what-if,' but it won't get us any closer to our goal."

"I guess we'll have to try Prince John or King Leonidas after all," said Daisy.

"No, we won't," said Mickey. "We're getting King Louie's crown…because we're getting King Louie out from under the influence of those Dispirations."

Five perplexed but hopeful gazes met his own. "Gawrsh, Mickey, do you really think we can?" asked Goofy.

"I didn't even know the Dispirations could _do_ that to people," said Donald.

"None of us did," said Mickey. "But that doesn't mean we can't figure out how to _un_do it…and I've already got a hunch."

This time, the gazes were expectant. "What sort of hunch?" prompted Minnie.

"The Dispirations were controlling Louie with that weird music," said Mickey pensively.

"If you can _call_ it music," Donald put in derisively.

"Well, they _are_ ideas gone bad," said Mickey. "These ones must have been songs before they were forgotten. And music is Louie's favorite thing in the world, even more than bananas and figuring out how to make fire. It must have been easy for the Dispirations to shapeshift into monkeys and pretend to be singing along with the jazz, when really they were getting their own tunes into his head."

"So how do we fix it?" said Goofy.

"I bet I know what you've got in mind," said Minnie. "Fight music with music…right?"

"Exactly," said Mickey. "If we can bring another source of music into the temple, one loud enough to drown out the Dispirations' singing, we might be able to snap King Louie out of it."

"That's a pretty tall order," said Daisy. "Don't forget it's only 1975—it's not like we can just borrow someone's boombox."

"You're right," Mickey agreed. "If it were much earlier, we wouldn't have many options at all…but the past few years have been good to this park when it comes to music. And once this boat docks, we're all dropping in a bunch of good friends and enlisting their help."

With that, he settled back in his seat with a self-satisfied smile, leaving the others to put two and two together.

Good friends…good, _musical_ friends…like Henry and Trixie and Wendell and the rest of the bluegrass-singing Country Bears. Like the Singing Busts, who livened (or at least undeadened) the graveyard of the Haunted Mansion with accompaniment by the Rolling Bones. Like Mandolin Mike, Billy Willikins, and Long Dan (and Scruffy), the most disciplined pirate musicians in the Caribbean. Like Jose, Michael, Pierre, Fritz, and all the other birds in the Tiki Glee Club. Like Sam Eagle and Ollie Owl, and their host of all-American critters. Like the children of the world.

Confined to Disneyland (and Walt Disney World, by now), lacking an existence outside the theme parks, none of them would leap readily to the mind of a typical fan thinking about the characters in the Disney Family. But that circumscription was precisely what would make them eager and invaluable allies in the quest. Pushed to it, the animated characters could find a way to retreat, recover in safer territory, and make a comeback later. For the attraction-based characters, Disneyland was literally all they had. It was _home_, in the purest and most visceral sense of the word, and they would give their all to defend it.

Mickey just hoped their all would be enough.

To Be Continued…

* * *

_A/N: Pop quiz time! Why did it take Karalora so long to get this chapter out? A) The holiday season. B) Writer's block. C) Work and other projects. D) All of the above. E) I don't care, she just better get the next one out faster or I'm going to reach right through my computer monitor and throttle her tardy butt._

_For those of you who **didn't** pick E, it was mostly a combination of A and C. The writing itself is actually coming pretty easily…when I can find enough time for it!_

_As you might be able to guess, the next chapter is going to consist almost entirely of the Sensational Six visiting some truly classic attractions and interacting with the characters there. As such, I plan to ease back on the drama and intense action and ramp up the comedy, whimsy, and lush atmospheric description. I'm hoping to make it a **fun** chapter, both for me to write and for all of you to read._

_Thanks for being patient again. Fanfiction is fundamentally a self-indulgent hobby for me, but seeing the reviews I get from my readers makes it as thrilling as any roller coaster. It sounds corny, but it's true._

_—Karalora_


	20. Chapter 20

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 20: Rounding Up the Band, Part 1

Donald took one of the unlit torches from its holder and poked the tiki statue with it a few times, to make sure it _was_ just a statue.

"All clear," he told the others, and the six of them filed into the Tahitian Terrace dining area and clustered around a table. Mickey spread out a souvenir map of Disneyland obtained from the Jungle Cruise ticket kiosk and pulled a marking pen out of his pocket.

"We have six targets," he said, drawing bold blue X's on the map, "here, here, here, here, here, and here. And there are six of us. It's obviously not safe for anyone to wander around the park alone, so I suggest we split into two groups of three. We've been sending people out in threes to patrol, and it seems to be working well. Donald, Goofy, and Daisy, you three go west from here and cover Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, and the Country Bear Jamboree. Minnie, Pluto and I will head east and drop in on the Tiki Room, America Sings, and 'it's a small world.'

"Our objectives are to fill everyone in on what's going, and to get some of them to come back to the jungle with us and counteract what the Dispirations are doing to King Louie. And I think we should get as many _different_ types of musicians as possible, so we have plenty of options and can switch things up and keep the Dispirations off-balance."

He took a deep breath before continuing. "Now, we can't predict exactly what's going to happen once we get inside the attractions, but there's an excellent chance that we'll find ourselves in the middle of some pretty intense adventures. So let's give ourselves plenty of time to hit all our stops. If we meet back here at sundown, that's about seven or eight hours…plus it makes things easier for any ghosts we manage to recruit. So…any questions?"

"Yes, actually," said Daisy petulantly. "Since you bring up ghosts and all…why are you claiming all the nice friendly attractions for yourself and leaving us to deal with ghosts and pirates and grizzly bears? Well, I guess the bears aren't really a problem, but still!"

Mickey mentally stalled out. The truth was that he didn't have a _specific_ reason in mind for dividing up the attractions that way, other than the efficiency of having one group go east and the other go west. He had just said what first came to mind. But he felt the need to defend his decision—maybe to avoid appearing too arbitrary, maybe because he had the faint impression that Daisy was protesting more for the sake of being argumentative than because of any legitimate concern.

"It just works better this way," he said, the logic coming to him as he went along. "You know Pluto doesn't get along well with Keys…and he _hates_ Gomer for some reason." At the mention of the bear pianist's name, Pluto made a confirming growl. "We can't very well have him in the group that heads west. And I have to go where he goes."

"Oh…right," Daisy said, deflating.

"Don't worry, toots," Donald reassured her. "I'll protect you from the scary stuff."

"Who's scared? _I_ didn't say anything about being _scared_. I just don't think it's fair that—"

"Daisy," Minnie interrupted firmly but gently, "if it bothers you that much, I'll switch places with you."

"I just said I…really?" said Daisy? "You'd do that for me?"

"Not just for you," said Minnie. "I'm making this offer because you won't be much use to anyone if you're constantly worried about being in danger."

"Wait a minute, Minnie," said Mickey, who was suddenly beset with mental visions of his girlfriend tossed in the brig of a pirate ship, or under attack by zombies. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea. Daisy could be right about the danger."

"So?" Minnie retorted. "The dangers will be the same no matter who covers the west side. If it's a bad idea for me, it's a bad idea for Daisy and Donald and Goofy." Realizing that she sounded intimidatingly angry, she made a spirited smile. "Come on, Mickey—you said you were going to start trusting the characters to see to their own safety. Aren't we all characters too?"

Mickey met her smile with his own. "Minnie, if there's one thing you definitely are, it's a character! Okay, we'll do it. You go with Donald and Goofy, and Daisy, you can come with Pluto and me. Come to think of it, it might even be fun to mix it up a little from how we normally do things."

_Fun_ was not a word any of the others would have used to describe anything about the crisis they were all facing, but they couldn't begrudge Mickey his optimism. More to the point, they were all—including Mickey—anxious to get the next phase of the quest underway.

Meeting each other's eyes around the small table, they each put a hand in the center (or in Pluto's case, a paw) and held them in formation briefly before raising them skyward with a wordless cry of determination. Then the group left the Tahitian Terrace and split into two equal halves, one heading east, the other west.

After a moment, Minnie and Daisy remembered that they had agreed to switch places, and each darted back the other way, uttering a humorous "Oops!" as she passed the other.

* * *

"I wish I were wearing better shoes," Daisy remarked idly, hobbling slightly from her brief run. "If I'd known we were going to be walking clear across the park a few times, I'd have worn lower heels. At least our first stop is right here." They were standing directly under the Adventureland entrance arch, next to the canopied lanai that served as the waiting area for the Enchanted Tiki Room.

"Actually," said Mickey, "I was thinking we should take Minnie's advice about running errands where you have to make a lot of stops. She says it's best to start at the one that's farthest out and work your way back."

"Well…okay," Daisy agreed. "Far be it from me to doubt Minnie's expertise when it comes to planning a shopping trip…or anything similar. As long as we don't have to pick up a quart of milk and a dozen eggs on top of everything else."

Mickey chuckled in appreciation of the good-natured joke. "As long as we're going to be up by 'it's a small world,' do you want to stop at home to change shoes?"

"No thanks, I think I'll be okay." She looked over at the Tiki Room and made an exhale of frustration. "Are you sure, Mickey? We're _right here_."

"Trust me on this," said Mickey, pulling her along with him as he and Pluto set out walking for Central Plaza. "If things start going south, you'll be glad our last stop is on the way back to our meeting place." Daisy grumbled at this, but not too strenuously.

From the shadows under the tropical plants decorating the perimeter of the lanai, dozens of invisible eyes watched them leave. The owners of the eyes nodded to each other and began developing suitable bodies for themselves.

Mickey, Daisy, and Pluto crossed Central Plaza heading northeast, along the parade route where it detoured around Sleeping Beauty's Castle and angled toward the Matterhorn. As they neared the base of the towering peak, Mickey slowed his pace and looked left and right, biting his lip slightly. "This way," he said finally, leading the other two to the right, around the south side of the mountain and into Tomorrowland.

"Um…why are we doing this?" asked Daisy. "Wouldn't it be a lot faster to go the other way?"

"I don't want to get any closer to the courtyard than we have to," Mickey explained. "I just _know_ someone will flag us down to ask a few questions, and then someone else will notice, and before we know it we'll be completely sidetracked."

"Yeah, you're probably right," she agreed. "Although that would be less of a risk if you knew how to say _no_ to people." At his irritated look, she raised her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I'm just saying, is all!"

They were on the east side of the Matterhorn by now, walking between it and the Submarine Lagoon across the walkway. Mickey repressed a shudder as he glanced at the sparkling surface of the water, remembering the dreadful ordeal he had endured…good grief, had it really been only the previous day? (Or had it been ten years? The forward jumps were definitely not good for keeping track of a timeline.)

A subtle movement near the Monorail station caught his eye. A small machine, looking something like a Mars rover with four robotic arms, was trundling around on the track. "Careful, you two," Mickey said softly, setting a hand on Pluto's head. "I think there's a Dispiration up there. Let's make sure not to draw any attention to ourselves."

The other two followed his gaze. Pluto made a token whine at the sight of the machine. "That looks like one of the ones we fought in the Monorail," said Daisy quietly. "I wonder what it's still doing up there." It appeared not to be doing much of anything, just wheeling idly back and forth along a short stretch of track, occasionally emitting an electronic sound somewhere between a beep and a whir.

"Let's not stick around to find out," said Mickey, picking up his pace slightly, nudging Pluto along with him. They continued on to the Fantasyland side of the mountain and, after a few furtive glances to make sure no one was about, turned right, heading toward the north end of the park and the sprawling white façade of "it's a small world."

It almost hurt to look at under the cloudless late-morning sky, the geometric panels and gold-leafed spires and pinwheels catching full sunlight and shining nearly as brilliantly as the sun itself. With no noisy guests present, the slow ticking of the giant clock could be heard all the way at the southern end of the broad walkway leading up to the attraction, and the ride's signature music carried almost as far. The overall effect was a magnification of "it's a small world's" already larger-than-life presence, dominating its corner of the park.

"Gee…it's almost eerie, isn't it? Eerie in a cute, cheerful, totally wholesome way, of course," Daisy observed. "Does that make any sense?"

"Strangely enough, it does," Mickey replied.

As they had expected, there were no Cast Members manning the attraction, but it was running anyway, the pastel-colored boats cruising straight through the bifurcated load/unload area without stopping…and, by some fortunate quirk of timing, without colliding when the two branches met up again. Since the sedate pace of the ride offered little risk to a reasonably agile person attempting to board a moving boat, the three of them simply made their way through the queue to the edge of the flume and hopped in the next vessel to drift by.

Then they braced themselves in preparation for what was bound to occur once their boat entered the show building.

"it's a small world" is not a very popular attraction with anyone other than young children. By age nine or so, people tend to feel overwhelmed—if not outright disgusted—by the cartoonishly bright colors, saccharine message, and infamously repetitive theme song. Mickey Mouse, being a wide-eyed idealist even on his worst day, and having a fond working relationship with the Sherman Brothers, had no problem with either the message or the song…but even he had to admit that in many respects, the ride looked like the United Nations had eaten too much fruit-flavored candy and been sick all over the interior of the building.

The children who populated it, on the other hand, typically behaved as though they had eaten too much candy and were rapidly metabolizing it. "Cheerful" didn't begin to describe it…and as the lemon-yellow boat occupied by the three cartoon characters floated into the first show scene (the Far North), the children's exuberance only increased. "It's Mickey Mouse!" cried the pint-sized Inuits and Lapps. "Hello, Mickey! Hello, Miss Daisy Duck! Hello…(what's the doggie's name again?)…hello, Pluto!"

They cruised through the ride, from Europe to Asia, Africa to Latin America and thence to Oceania, their arrival bringing a surge of excitement to the international throng with each new scene. The kids swarmed the edges of the canal, reaching out to shake hands with their guests and greeting them with excessive friendliness in their various native tongues. "Hola, Señor Ratoncito! Konnichi-wa, Ahiru-san! Jambo, Pluto-mbwa! Aloha! Guten tag! Salaam! Nihao! Zdravstvuite!" It was dizzying, and it continued throughout the trip, until their boat reached the final scene, the White Room, where all the nations came together in one big multicultural celebration, and where there was plenty of space to disembark and hold an impromptu meeting.

"Sure, sure, it's great to see you too," said Mickey, wading through the sea of overeager youngsters. "My goodness, isn't that a nice…bowl. You painted it yourself? No pulling on my tail, please—_ouch_! Listen, I can't—I can't do what I'm here to do with all of you pawing me like that…if some of you could just…Daisy, help!"

"Everybody, _QUIET!!_" bellowed Daisy, so loudly that a few specks of plaster drifted down from the ceiling. An instant hush fell over the White Room, the children staring wide-eyed at her, but still smiling (because they always smiled).

"Thanks, Daisy," said Mickey. "Now, kids, it _is_ nice to see you all, but unfortunately, this isn't a pleasure visit. The fact is, we need your help."

"Muy bueno, Señor Mickey," said Pablo, the Mexican boy who tended to act as one of the de facto leaders of the "it's a small world" cast. "What can we do para usted?"

Mickey had already decided not to let on too many details about the crisis, which would only frighten the innocent children. "Some naughty monkeys are singing bad songs over in Adventureland. We're getting people to go there with us this evening and sing _good_ songs to teach them a lesson. And you kids have one of the most good songs all of Disneyland."

"Ah-ah-ah, you cannot fool me, Señor Mickey," said Pablo. "I know you do not say 'most good,' en ingles…you say 'best!' But I will happily help you, and I know the other children will happily help you also. Right, amigos?"

There was a general cheer from the already dangerously enthusiastic crowd. "Whoa, settle down, settle down!" Daisy urged them. "We only need a few. Okay, Pablo, you already volunteered…who else wants to come?"

There were dozens of immediate offers, but Mickey and Daisy managed to pare it down to six: Pablo; Umeko, a deceptively demure-looking Japanese girl; Masamba, the African drummer boy; an Indian dancer named Vasanta; the Inuit kayak champion Tikaani; and Anneliese from the Netherlands, who was generally sweet but had deadly aim with her clogs when there was a good reason for it. A fine representative sample of the attraction's many cultures.

"What fun this will be!" said Masamba, thumping his drum in a practice rhythm. "Mickey, bwana, when shall we meet you in Adventureland?"

"Sunset," said Mickey. "But I don't expect you kids to trek through the park by yourselves when it's swarming with Disp… uh, with naughty monkeys. I'll send Pluto back here to pick you up when it's almost time. Remember not to pull on his ears and tail this time." Pluto snorted in agreement, knowing well how overenthusiastic children usually treat innocent dogs.

Their task finished, the three of them made their way back to the canal and jumped into the next passing boat, exiting the White Room to a mind-boggling chorus of "Arrivederci! Namasté! Zai jian! Cheerio! Aroha nui!"

"Good grief," said Daisy, patting her feather-do to make sure it was still properly tidy. "Those kids do fill space, don't they? I feel like I've been spelunking in a cave made out of world flags and glitter. So, where to next, boss? America Sings?"

Mickey made a nod of confirmation. "We'll have to be careful moving through Tomorrowland, though. We saw the one Dispiration on the way in; there might be more still wandering around."

They scrambled out of the boat as it passed the unload area and made their way back up the long thoroughfare and around the Matterhorn into Tomorrowland. The Dispiration they had seen before was still where it had been, scuttling around the short section of Monorail track as though it were lost, and they ignored it in its peculiar innocuousness while staying alert to the presence of others that might be more hostile.

But they could not ignore the apparition, both familiar and unfamiliar that arose in the southernmost part of the Tomorrowland skyline, towering above all around it. It was the shape that was familiar—a broad-based cone with the tip sheared off, adorned with ridges radiating down its sides from the top and with elegant upswept spires. But it was made of entirely unfamiliar substance…if indeed it was made of substance at all, for it looked like a thing of light and mist and gossamer, more transparent than the most delicate crystal. Its form was defined by glistening edges with no surfaces to fill the space between them, as though a huge spider web were being grasped in the center and drawn gently toward the sky, every thread catching the light with a faint twinkling iridescence.

If it had been a solid structure, it would have been Space Mountain…and it would have been two years early, as the famous roller coaster had been completed in 1977. As the ephemeral construct it was, none of the three of them could even imagine what it was doing there, or what it meant.

* * *

"Thank you so much, Henry," said Minnie again, shaking the shaggy emcee's heavily clawed paw. "All you bears take care of yourselves now."

"Yeah," said Goofy. "And if you see anything that looks almost like it belongs but not quite…step on it!"

Henry laughed heartily. "I think that can be arranged. But to be honest, I don't anticipate much trouble. It'd take some pretty bold monsters indeed to mess with a den o' bears!"

"That's a good point," said Minnie. "Are you sure this won't leave you too short-handed to defend yourselves?"

"Heh. I'm sure we'll manage, with or without the Bear Rugs," said Henry. "Don't you worry 'bout us none. Jest get on with what needs gettin' on with, and I'll see you—or rather, the boys'll see you—at sunset."

"Thanks again!" piped Minnie as the three of them headed out the exit of the Country Bear Playhouse.

"Well, that was nice!" Goofy emoted. "We oughta visit with him more often!"

"I just hope the other two stops are this easy…even though I know they _won't_ be," said Donald. The other two sobered instantly, unable to disagree with him. Even at the best of times, dropping in on the 999 "happy haunts" of the Haunted Mansion, or the rowdy Pirates of the Caribbean, was a harrowing prospect. Neither group was villainous per se, but it simply wasn't in their nature to be cooperative—or, for that matter, friendly—toward outsiders.

It was the former they faced now, as they left Bear Country, skirting the western shore of the Rivers of America, and arrived at the northernmost tip of New Orleans Square. To their right, the Haunted Mansion loomed, perched in its sheltered corner of the park like a gargoyle, watching and waiting for the right moment to pounce on an unwary passerby.

Fortunately for Minnie, Donald, and Goofy, they were very wary indeed, and they were not merely passing by. After a brief pause in which they gathered their collective nerve, they passed through the wrought-iron gates and marched up to the colonnaded porch and, after a second, briefer pause, into the dimly lit foyer: a room no more than twenty feet square, with a tiger lily pattern on the greenish wallpaper, a large crystal chandelier dominating the ceiling, and two of the walls consisting mainly of large sliding panel doors, each one leading to one of the attraction's famous stretching galleries.

They waited to be formally received.

And waited.

And waited a bit longer.

"Uh…shouldn't somethin' have happened by now?" wondered Goofy. "Where's Master Gracey?"

No sooner had he spoken than the door from the porch slammed violently shut. That wasn't standard operating procedure! The three of them found themselves rather alarmingly enclosed in the foyer, with only the feeble candles on the chandelier illuminating the hush space.

"Master Gracey?" Minnie tentatively called out to the empty, motionless air. "Is that you? Listen…um…you probably know this already, but this is Minnie Mouse. I'm here with Donald and Goofy on some pretty important business…so do you think you could tone down the haunting, just for today?"

All that happened in response was that one of the pairs of panel doors obligingly slid open, letting the three of them into the octagonal gallery beyond. High above their heads, flanked by grinning gargoyles bearing candles, the portraits of some of the Mansion's more distinguished residents smiled or glowered down at them: a delicate young woman with a pink parasol, a stern-faced, middle-aged gentleman in a formal suit, a graceful older women holding a red rose, and another man wearing a brown bowler hat and a saucy expression. The panel closed itself again, and the floor began descending slowly, elongating the room vertically. And still Master Gracey's sarcastically spooky voice was absent. The abnormal silence was far, far more unsettling than the creepy spiel that usually accompanied this part of the show, in which Gracey drew guests' attention to the fact that the room was not only bizarrely stretching, but lacked visible exits.

"Brrrrrrr! This is giving me the creeps," said Donald, wrapping his arms firmly around his torso. "What do you think is going _on_?"

"I couldn't say," said Minnie. "Maybe we'll find out when we get to the bottom."

The elevator continued to descend. The paintings unreeled on the lengthening walls, revealing the eerie truth behind the ordinary-looking scenes: the girl with the parasol balanced on a tightrope over the waiting jaws of a crocodile; the gentleman standing on a barrel of dynamite with the fuse lit; the elderly woman sitting serenely on the gravestone of her husband, who had had his skull cleft in two with an axe; the fellow with the bowler hat perched on the shoulders of a second, who was similarly perched on a third…and all three of them sinking into quicksand. Gallows humor, the lot of it. On this particular occasion, it didn't seem so funny.

Finally, the floor bumped softly to a halt and a different sliding panel opened, letting Minnie, Donald, and Goofy out into a short hallway lined on one side with more paintings. These also changed from normal scenes to sinister ones, fading back and forth between their two states: an Egyptian princess lounging on a divan morphed into a savage panther-woman, a knight on horseback was struck by lightning and transformed into a gruesome undead skeleton, and similar. On the other side of the corridor, picture windows revealed a dark and stormy night outside, in total defiance of the fact that it was really a sunny summer's day.

And now, finally, something came to greet them: a silver three-branched candelabra, floating toward them without visible means of support, as though it were being carried by an invisible butler.

"Finally!" Minnie breathed. "We were beginning to think even the ghosts had abandoned this place. Can you tell us what's going on? Where's Master Gracey?"

The candelabra bobbed, as though bowing or curtseying, and then began sweeping and spinning about, the candle flames leaving glowing green traces hanging in the air. Random-appearing at first, these soon rearranged themselves and coalesced into the shape of eerie letters in an old-fashioned style of script: THE MASTER IS CURRENTLY OCCUPIED

"Occupied with _what_?" Donald demanded.

The letters gradually faded out, and the floating candelabra produced more of them: WITH A MATTER OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE.

"What a coincidence," said Minnie, "because _we're_ here on a matter of utmost importance. Please take us to see him."

I'M AFRAID THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE, the candelabra wrote. THE MASTER HAS ASKED NOT TO…BE DISTURBED FOR ANY REASON.

"Well, you tell him—" Donald began, but Minnie held up a placating hand.

"I know you're just doing your job," she told the candelabra, "but believe me, there's not a single thing he could be doing that's more important than this. At the very least, will you please let him know we're here?"

The candles flared in a way that suggested a sigh, and the candelabra made a beckoning motion before drifting back the way it had come. Minnie, Donald, and Goofy followed with a mixture of relief and raised apprehension.

"Do you think we can trust that thing?" asked Donald, _sotto voce_. "What if it's a Dispiration?"

"I don't think it matters," said Minnie with a slight shudder. "If this place were nothing but wall-to-wall Dispirations, it wouldn't be much worse than it normally is."

Donald made a tiny but explosive chuckle. "Come on, Minnie," he said. "Don't tell me this place _scares_ you."

"Maybe a little," she confessed. "But so what if it does? It's _supposed_ to be scary. Anyway, it's not like _you_ have room to talk—don't think I haven't noticed how nervous you are today."

"I'm not nervous," Donald defended himself as they reached the end of the hallway and turned the corner. "I'm keeping my guard up in case there are Dispirations around here." He turned up his beak and walked on ahead of the other two…straight into a thick curtain of cobwebs. There followed a moment of flailing and spitting out dusty strands. "That doesn't prove anything!" Donald said hastily while trying to disentangle himself. He noticed something black and beadlike clinging to his beak and crossed his eyes, focusing on it. It turned out to be a quite large and absolutely bewildered spider.

Even if they hadn't been in a haunted house, Donald's scream of panic would have been enough to wake the dead. Minnie and Goofy watched the ensuing spectacle with mild amusement, as he hollered and swiped at the arachnid, succeeding only in getting himself further wrapped up in the sheetlike webs. By the time he gave up, exhausted, he was virtually cocooned in them, suspended from the ceiling…and the spider was still scuttling about his beak in its own marble-sized fright.

Minnie couldn't stop herself. "My _word_, Donald, it's certainly a good thing you're not _nervous_. Imagine how much worse that would have been just now if you were." Donald glared at her and muttered angrily, but was unable to retort properly because of the cobwebs lashing his beak shut.

Minnie and Goofy helped Donald out of his dusty silken predicament. This took a few minutes due to the sheer volume of cobwebs involved, and by the time they were finished, the floating candelabra was nowhere to be seen.

"Oops," said Goofy. "I think it went on without us."

"Maybe not," said Donald, pointing to the area just ahead of them, where an endless line of strange objects, looking something like black eggshells with seating for two, moved constantly, conveyor belt-style, emerging from…somewhere in the gloom behind, and progressing up a staircase to the gloom further on. These were the Doom Buggies, the Haunted Mansion's iconic ride vehicles. "Maybe we're supposed to get on the ride."

"I doubt it," said Minnie. "The Doom Buggies don't go anywhere near Master Gracey's private quarters."

"Well, maybe Master Gracey isn't in his private quarters," Goofy suggested. "The candles didn't _say_ he was; they just said he was busy."

"Good point," Minnie and Donald chorused. Not knowing what else to do, the three of them trooped over to the Doom Buggies and hopped into one of them. It was a tight fit, but manageable.

"Say, we better pull down on the safety bar," Goofy piped up after half a moment. "Master Gracey isn't around to lower it for us."

"Better not," Donald disagreed. "We might have to jump out of this thing in a hurry." The front portion of the Doom Buggy stayed where it was, adding to the off-kilter feeling of the visit as the car ascended the staircase in total silence.

They might have done better to pull it closed. One of the first sights on the Haunted Mansion tour is the eerie, aptly named Endless Hallway, which extends off to the right of the Doom Buggy track. Normally, the vehicles swivel gently to the right at that point, to give their occupants an unobstructed view of the indefinitely long corridor. The Buggy carrying Minnie, Donald, and Goofy, however, instead swiveled rather abruptly to the left, and then there was a bone-jarring lurch as it suddenly zoomed _backwards_, leaping off the beaten path to whiz up the Endless Hallway itself. Its three passengers, quite naturally, screamed in sheer unadulterated terror. They could see nothing of where they were going, only where they had been, and after the first time the Doom Buggy whipped around a corner, none of it was at all familiar—what seemed like miles of passages, lined on both sides with countless identical wooden doors and the occasional half-moon table. At least once, the Doom Buggy charged up another staircase; at least once, it plunged in freefall down a dumbwaiter shaft for a few floors, halting its descent by unknown means in order to emerge safely (but still terrifyingly) into the next stretch of hallway.

By the time the mad vehicle finally coasted to a stop, the three of them had been reduced to quivering wrecks. They didn't even notice that they _had_ stopped until after they had slithered, half-fainting from motion sickness, out of the Doom Buggy and sprawled bonelessly on the floor. But eventually the hallway stopped spinning. Minnie sat up weakly, blinking in confusion.

"Guys, it looks like we're here…wherever 'here' is."

It was certainly no part of the Haunted Mansion that any of them had ever been to before. The wallpaper bore a pattern of black roses outlined in metallic gold that glinted in the dim light. (The source of the light was not readily apparent, but that was typical of the Mansion.) The carpet was thin plush and looked sage green at first, but as they shuffled about, regaining the feeling in their legs, they noticed that they were leaving _hunter_ green footprints in the pile—the dull color was due to a thick layer of dust that had settled on the floor.

Since the Doom Buggy was still facing backward with respect to its destination, they had to move around it to see where it was they had been dragged off to. They were near the end of a hallway that terminated in ornate, varnished oak double doors. The floating candelabra was there, managing somehow to give off an air of mild impatience.

THIS WAY, PLEASE, it wrote in the air. The double doors swung open slowly, their massive brass hinges creaking like ancient trees in a storm, to reveal a sort of antechamber, containing four-legged stools (with plush cushions) and potted plants (just this side of dead) and framed oil paintings (of positively ghoulish-looking aristocrat types) and surprisingly few cobwebs. In the wall immediately counter-clockwise from the double door was a single door, slightly ajar. A strip of warm light spilled out of the narrow gap, and the muffled sound of voices could be heard.

The candelabra led Minnie, Donald, and Goofy into the small room, spelled out WAIT HERE, PLEASE, and slipped through the gap in the doorway. After a brief moment, it reappeared. YOU HAVE BEEN FORMALLY ANNOUNCED…THE MASTER WILL BE WITH YOU PRESENTLY. Then it flitted out the double doors, which closed with a cacophony of groans and squeaks.

It was a great deal darker in the antechamber with them closed. The only light came from a stump of candle in a bronze wall sconce, and from the gap in the doorway. The oil paintings looked even more ghastly in the dimness, with the eyes (and, in some cases, teeth) of the subjects standing out starkly against the darker faces. In order to take their minds off the grimness of their immediate surroundings while they waited, the three characters tried to listen in on the conversation taking place in the next room. They could only make out about every fourth or fifth word spoken, but the voices speaking were easy enough to identify.

One was a rich, fluid, heavily inflected baritone. This belonged to Master Gracey; in fact, in a sense it _was_ Master Gracey, because he rarely existed as anything more than a disembodied voice. The other voice was that of a woman, smooth and chilly and self-possessed to the point of haughtiness. The three of them recognized it with a horrified start:

_Maleficent!_

Worse, the tone of the barely-audible conversation made it clear that there was no hostility at all between her and Master Gracey. Whatever they were discussing, however it had come about, they were on the same side…and that meant that the three waiting to be admitted to their presence were in a very bad spot indeed.

Swallowing a yelp of fear, Goofy sprang to his feet and made for the double door, but Donald caught him by the back of his shirt and whirled him back to his stool, which was next to Minnie's. Having already come unglued once over the spider, and again over the madcap Doom Buggy ride, the duck was not about to give in to another panic reaction, and he was not about to let the other two do so either. He pulled his own stool over to theirs and drew them into a huddle.

"What are you _doing_?" Minnie hissed. "We need to get _out_ of here!"

"Running away won't do any good," he explained. "They already know we're here. What we need to do is march right in there and confront them. Let them know we're not afraid of them."

"But Donald," Goofy whispered, cringing, "we _are_ afraid of them!"

"Then we'll fake it!" Donald said sharply. "We're actors, aren't we? Come on. Follow my lead."

He rose and marched over to the door, not so much frightened as _geared up_. The other two followed, hoping desperately that he actually had some sort of plan. Donald took a deep breath, rolled up his sleeves, took another deep breath, and then flung the door wide and charged into the room. "_Aha!_" he said triumphantly, pointing an accusing finger at the tableau inside. "Thought you'd get away with…huh?" He staggered back a few feet, totally deflated.

Maleficent was nowhere to be seen. What was to be seen was a tastefully appointed study furnished with mahogany bookshelves and a deep, wine-red carpet. An antique oil lamp sitting on a small table next to an elegant, leather-upholstered armchair provided most of the light. The rest emanated from the other object on the table: a sixteen-inch crystal ball inside which was a woman's head with wild white hair, an eldritch glow, and a bored expression. It was Madam Leota, the Haunted Mansion's resident spiritualist (an easy profession for someone who is herself a spirit)…whose voice happened to be identical to Maleficent's.

"Ah, there you are!" said Master Gracey's voice from the vicinity of the armchair. "I was just about to call you in."

"I told you this would happen," said Leota. "The living are _so_ impatient."

"Among other limitations," said Gracey. There was a shimmer in the air around the armchair, and strands of faintly luminescent mist drew together, forming first an outline, and then the figure of a man sitting in the cushioned opulence—a young man, slim-figured and brown-haired, wearing a Victorian smoking jacket. "This should help to accommodate one of them. Now, then—what is so dreadfully important that you three feel the need to make demands of my house staff and interrupt my private conference with Madam Leota?" He smiled amiably, to let them know there were no hard feelings. Unfortunately, since he was a ghost, the actual effect was rather disturbing.

"Well, it's like this," said Goofy cheerfully. (He was so relieved to find that they weren't facing Maleficent and a hostile Haunted Mansion after all that he couldn't help but be full of glee.) "See, there're these crowns, right? And Maleficent went and hid them all in different years, and we gotta find 'em so it'll be 2005 again. But before we can do that, we need to get this _other_ crown from King Louie, only the Dispirations have got him all hypnotized, so we gotta get people to sing to him and break the spell!"

Leota and Gracey exchanged baffled glances. Minnie and Donald winced, expecting an unimpressed dismissal of the barely coherent explanation. Instead, Leota made one full, leisurely rotation inside her crystal ball and said, "All issues of articulateness aside, that seems quite relevant to what we have been discussing. Wouldn't you agree, George?"

"Quite so," Master Gracey agreed. "We have recently suffered an influx of…rather peculiar visitors. On the face of things, they seem like perfectly ordinary ghosts…er, so to speak. But they are almost completely anti-social, never saying a single word to anyone."

"Not that it's worth much trying to engage them," Madam Leota added. "Getting anywhere near them is…well, without putting too fine a point on it, it's horrid. And I'm saying this as someone who _specializes_ in horrid—creepies and crawlies and toads in a pond, and all that."

"That's them!" Donald exclaimed. "They're called Dispirations, and they work for Maleficent."

"Who is, I presume, meddling with space and time? Just as I thought," said Leota. "See, George? I told you there was something of the sort going on. The emanations from Beyond were very clear about that."

"So there _are_ Dispirations in the Haunted Mansion," said Minnie. "But then where are they? We haven't run into any, and they usually mob us as soon as they figure out we're nearby."

"Mm, yes," said Master Gracey, manifesting a glass of brandy so that he could swirl it luxuriantly. "The newcomers have been restricted to the Graveyard, where some of our more boisterous residents can keep them in check. It seems to be working so far."

Minnie thought for a moment, tapping her foot and biting her lip. "That doesn't work so great for us, though. Those boisterous residents are probably the very ones we need."

"The ones you need to sing to King Louie," Leota filled in.

"Yes," said Minnie.

"Not to worry, friends," said Master Gracey expansively. "As you know, there is no shortage of musical spirit on the premises. Or musical _spirits_, for that matter. When and where do you need them?"

"On the Tahitian Terrace at sunset," said Donald.

"He means real sunset," Goofy clarified. "Not whatever you get in here that makes it the middle of the night all the time."

"I surmised as much," said Gracey with an arch little smile. "I think I can satisfy your little request without leaving us short-handed here. What say you, Leota?"

"Oh, absolutely," the oracular head agreed. "Some of our musicians don't even _have_ hands. Now, as to these 'Dispirations,' as you call them, are we to understand that they are infesting other parts of the park besides our Mansion?"

"You better believe they are!" Minnie avowed. "In fact, we were going to warn you about them…except that I guess you already know and are taking care of things for yourselves."

"My dear girl, we are _professionals_," said Leota airily. "One can't run a successful house of horrors without some mechanism to ensure that only _authorized_ horrors gain entrance to the house. But you have apparently had more dealings with these beings than we have. Would you say our containment strategy is a good one, or ought we take a more severe tack in managing these interlopers?"

"Uh…" Minnie stalled out. She hadn't been expecting such a question.

Donald picked up the slack. "Get rid of 'em! Those things are bad news!"

"Duly noted," said Gracey, swirling his brandy some more. "And perhaps after night falls, we can send a patrol corpse out into New Orleans Square to handle the threat in a larger radius."

"Gawrsh, that'd be great!" said Goofy. "But, uh, don't you mean a patrol _corps_?"

Gracey's grin broadened. "A body, in any case," he said with a horrendous chuckle. "So then, have you any more business to discuss?"

"I don't think so," said Minnie. "Fellas, do we?"

"Fill them in on what's going on…check. Get some musicians to come back to the jungle with us…check," Donald counted off on his fingers. "No, that's it."

"Excellent!" said Master Gracey. "In that case…" He snapped his fingers.

The floor dropped out from under the three of them.

After a brief but heart-stopping plunge, they landed—_oof_—in a moving Doom Buggy, which summarily turned ninety degrees to the left and tipped them out onto a moving walkway. They were at the end of the ride.

"Good _grief_," Minnie emoted as she got shakily to her feet. "I won't say I'm not glad Master Gracey's on our side, but his sense of humor…" The other two heartily agreed, though they didn't have enough left in them to do more than mumble their concurrence.

The three of them staggered out of the Haunted Mansion and into the sunlight, hoping—but by no means confident—that the next phase of their errand would be much less nerve-wracking.

To Be Continued…

_

* * *

_

A/N: Master Gracey and Madam Leota are not as easy to write dialogue for as you might think. For some reason, they keep drifting off into British accents in my head, even though I know darn well that they're both all-American. Incidentally, Leota **does** have the same voice as Maleficent, because they share a voice actor: Eleanor Audley (who also voiced Lady Tremaine). This has been your Disney Trivia Tidbit for the day.

_This is the longest chapter of "Crowns" I have written to date (the Haunted Mansion inspires a lot of purple prose, as you might have noticed), and I barely covered half of what I originally intended to. Around about the end of the "it's a small world" segment, I looked at my page count and realized that I had, basically, three choices. 1) I could spend months and months writing a colossally huge chapter that detailed the visits to all six of the classic musical attractions, while my readers grew old waiting for the next update. 2) I could breeze through all six, writing only the bare bones of dialogue and action and totally skimping on the description. 3) I could chop the chapter in half, and save the rest for next time. Obviously, I went with 3). Fans of the Enchanted Tiki Room and Pirates of the Caribbean will have to wait for Chapter 21. But I promise you, it'll be worth it. :)_

_—Karalora_


	21. Chapter 21

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 21: Rounding Up the Band, Part 2

Mickey tottered as far as Tomorrowland Terrace (completely ignoring the robot Dispiration that was _still_ wheeling about the Monotrail track) and half collapsed into a seat at one of the tables. From that position, the anomalous outline of Space Mountain was hidden behind the comfortingly solid and rightfully placed Rocket Jets, and he could sit and think for a few minutes without its transparent form dominating his attention. Daisy took the seat across from him, sighing in anticipation of a delay. Pluto lay down obediently under the table.

"It must have something to do with the memories," Mickey muttered, hunching over the small tabletop and gently striking his forehead with the heels of his hands.

"Yeah, probably," Daisy agreed airily. "So then, weren't we going to see Sam and Ollie?"

"I need to _think_!" said Mickey, barely hearing her. "I gotta figure out what this means!"

"Hey," said Daisy, forcibly getting his attention by grabbing his hands and leaning at him over the table. "Conundrums can wait. We already had something important we were doing, remember?"

"I know," Mickey sighed, re-taking possession of his hands. "It's just that…it feels like every time we make some progress on this quest, some other problem or mystery pops up to make things even messier."

"Mickey," she said without a trace of irony, "welcome to life. I can't even get my water heater fixed without about a hundred complications; what made you think an epic quest to save Disneyland from Maleficent would be any more straightforward?"

Mickey cracked a smile. "Well, when you put it like that…"

"Maybe we'll figure out exactly why what looks a glass Space Mountain is sitting over there two years before any sort of Space Mountain should be there, and maybe we won't. As soon as we can get the next crown onto the Castle and move ahead to 1985, it'll be a moot point anyway, right?"

The smile grew a fraction of an inch wider. "I guess I can't argue with that. But I should warn you, I won't be able to stop thinking about it until we _do_ figure it out, and I may bring it up from time to time." Re-energized, he hopped to his feet, and the other two followed suit. "Now, let's go recruit some more musicians!"

Carousel Theater, then as now, was separated from Tomorrowland Terrace only by a broad, open walkway. Nonetheless, the three of them took time and care crossing it, lest they attract the attention of hostile and dangerous Dispirations. They hadn't seen any so far, other than the bizarrely aimless one on the Monorail track, but that didn't mean there weren't more around—Tomorrowland was more complex than it had been in 1965, with more small structures, more nooks and crannies in which smallish things could hide, more opportunities for consummate shapeshifters to camouflage themselves. And it had also changed plenty between 1975 and 2005, making their memories of the details, and hence their ability to tell a cluster of neon tubing that belonged from one that didn't, less reliable.

The theater was spinning—transitioning between acts of its whimsical show—as they reached it, which meant they had to wait a moment for the doors to open. A very long, very tense moment. They kept their backs to the red and white striped wall of the building while they waited, scanning their surroundings for any sign of movement.

Those who seek are likely to find. Something stirred in the doorway of the adjacent building, which housed the Mission to Mars attraction. The building itself gleamed with fresh, clean paint—Mission to Mars was brand new in 1975. But the figures gathering in the sheltering arch of its entrance were definitely not an intended part of the experience.

Mickey, Daisy, and Pluto froze, trying to look like part of the scenery themselves, an effort that was doomed to failure if the creatures emerging from Mission to Mars had any decent vision at all…which they almost certainly did, inasmuch as they clearly had eyes. Eyestalks, at any rate. Or were those antennae? More of the creatures' bodies came into view as they ventured out of the building, revealing bright green, vaguely scaly skin and weedy fingers clutching sinister-looking devices.

"What _are_ they?" Daisy hissed as quietly as she could.

"I think they're Martians," Mickey replied just as quietly.

"_MARTIANS?!_" Daisy erupted. Several pairs of antennae/eyestalks swiveled their way. "Uh-oh," Daisy apologized.

Fortunately, just at that instant, the theater's rotation came to a halt and the theater doors opened. It took less than three seconds for Mickey to usher the other two inside and dart in after them, slamming the doors shut again in the process. They listened briefly, trying to determine whether the aliens would try to follow, but didn't hear anything out of the ordinary.

"Sorry about blowing our cover like that," Daisy sighed. "It's just that…Mission to Mars is about what Mars is _really_ like, not some science-fiction version with little green men! Those things shouldn't even be here!"

"Daisy, none of the Dispirations should be here," Mickey reminded her. "This whole situation shouldn't _be_. But I know what you meant…and it doesn't matter. Those things are ideas gone bad, and they change to fit their surroundings, and right now, they're surrounded by—"

"—memories of Disneyland," Daisy finished for him. "I guess little green aliens are no more out-of-place in Mission to Mars than…_squid-lobster things_ are on the Submarine Voyage. It all depends on what people think about when they come here." She pursed her beak. "You'd think after the fireworks and the monkeys, I wouldn't be so surprised anymore."

There was a brief silence before Pluto suddenly made an urgent noise and began pawing at Mickey's knees.

"You're right, boy," Mickey chuckled. "We've dawdled long enough. Let's go talk to Sam and Ollie."

They continued into the quiet theater.

* * *

The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean lie at opposite ends of New Orleans Square, which occupies the southernmost portion of the outer shore of the Rivers of America, between Adventureland, Frontierland, and Critter Country (or Bear Country, as it was called in 1975). The most straightforward route between the two attractions is along the waterfront…but Minnie, Donald, and Goofy decided to take the roundabout back way, past the Disneyland Railroad station and through the boutique-lined streets of the Square, with the reasoning that they would be less exposed that way.

It wasn't until they had turned onto Royal Street and found themselves in what amounted to a narrow alley, with two-story buildings looming on either side and plenty of twisting side passages, that the opposite possibility was raised: "On the other hand," Minnie said in a deliberately conversational tone, "if we had gone the other way and any Dispirations had tried to attack us, we would have seen them coming well in advance."

Her point was well taken. The three of them drew together into a triangular, backs-to-the-center configuration that precluded the prospect of anything sneaking up on them, and continued up the street like that. It slowed them down considerably and they tripped slightly over each other's feet every few seconds, but at least they were invulnerable to surprise attacks…which was a good thing, because it was apparent to all three of them that the nooks and crannies of Royal Street were _full_ of Dispirations.

A cursory examination would never have revealed them. Most of them were in their formless state, recognizable only as the suggestions of shadows in full sunlight and whispers of breezes in perfectly still air. The few that had taken on solid shapes lurked on the wrought-iron balconies of the area's second story, blending in with the fanciful themed décor: homunculi made of coiled Mardi Gras beads, with Carnivale masks for faces; skeletal animals bedecked with rooster feathers and gaudy rhinestones; potted kudzu vines sloooooowwwwwwwwly creeping their way up the walls and over the railings of the buildings. But to the three characters inching their way through the avenue, the profusion of the things was obvious.

The Dispirations were watching them as they passed, with eyes like cut gems or clusters of sequins or gaps in leaves or simply eyeballs, as the case might be. They weren't behaving aggressively—so far—but they murmured and chattered suggestively to each other as they watched, in wordless "languages" that sounded like the clicking of dry bones or the rustle of leaves.

"Why aren't they attacking?" Minnie wondered.

"Maybe they're friendly?" Goofy suggested hopefully. "Like that Hydrophobia critter over at Merlin's."

"Not likely," said Donald. "Don't make any sudden moves." His personal theory was that the Dispirations were getting smarter—more foresighted and less impulsive—but he didn't say so in case he was wrong.

By and by, they reached the north end of Royal Street and were able to resume walking normally. By that time, however, the Dispirations were starting to creep out of the side alleys and down from the balconies, the amorphous ones rippling into solidity like their comrades.

"Okay, _now_ we can start making sudden moves," said Donald, and bolted for the entrance to Pirates of the Caribbean.

"Donald! Don't—" Minnie started, but he had already taken off. Moreover, the Dispirations, enticed by his flight, were beginning to give chase in earnest. "Come on," Minnie groaned to Goofy, pulling him by the hand as she broke into a brisk jog.

Donald needn't have been in _quite_ such a hurry—with one exception, these Dispirations couldn't move all that fast. The exception was bad enough, however: a stream of wind that swept over them with a sensation of stifling Louisiana summer heat and the harsh squeal of an out-of-tune alto saxophone. It served as a stern reminder of the true danger of the Dispirations—their ability to pummel one's very senses with a mere touch.

It was with relief that they reached the interior portion of the Pirates of the Caribbean queue and slammed the door shut behind them, shutting the thing out. But they didn't relax just yet—for all they knew, the ride's show building was also swarming with Dispirations. They spent a tense moment just waiting to see if anything would attack them now that they were inside.

Nothing did. To all appearances, the queue was empty except for them. The only sounds to be heard were the usual ones—the slosh of the water in the flume and the bumping of the boats, the mellow ambient music, and the droning of the night creatures from the bayou area ahead.

Music. Right. That was, after all, what they were there for—to recruit some pirate musicians.

"Should we just get in one of the boats?" Goofy wondered.

"I suppose so," said Minnie. "This isn't like the Haunted Mansion—I don't imagine anyone's going to meet us."

"Not anyone we would _want_ to meet, anyway," Donald added.

They made their way through the queue to the loading area, a detailed mock-up of a swampside dock labeled "Lafitte's Landing." Beyond it, to their left as they faced the flume, the bayou scene spread out in all its twilit splendor, dark, cool, damp…and real.

Minnie noticed it a split second before the others, and with a gasp whipped her head to the right to look back up the queue area. Incredibly, all was as it should be in that direction—the stem-to-stern procession of ride boats in the flume, the interior walls of the building, and most importantly, the bold daylight streaming through the windows from outside. Yet where they were standing was outside too, and it was just after sunset. Fireflies darted about the drooping cypresses, flashing their love messages. Lamplight flickered in the windows of the numerous stilt houses. Bullfrogs swam and leapt and croaked their _basso profundo_ songs among the clustered lily pads.

Minnie's gasp attracted the notice of the other two. "Well, this is different," said Goofy, looking back and forth between the two conflicting sets of conditions.

"Let's just get in the boat and take things as they come," said Donald. It seemed the most sensible thing to do.

Once they had boarded, they became aware of another bit of strangeness: the boat, although floating through a real live Louisiana swamp, still seemed to be trackbound, exactly retracing the path taken by the one ahead of it. It was too dark to check for certain, however; any hint of rails or gearworks would be invisible under the surface of the murky, brackish water. Anyway, there were more attention-grabbing things to wonder about…like the large, dark thing that lashed against the water off to their left and then glided away, leaving only a row of small, V-shaped wakes to show its location. Or the small flock of bats that fluttered madly out from underneath one of the stilt houses on their way to an evening's hunting.

By and by, the boat moved out of the open bayou, curving rightwards into a brick tunnel that was barely lit with guttering lamps, where a low voice with a distinct nautical accent could be heard intoning somewhere ahead. As the boat completed the turn, the speaker came into view: a human skull, adorned with a tricorne hat and an eyepatch, mounted on a plaque with two crossed cutlasses. The plaque, in turn, hung from the center of the next arch in the tunnel, beyond which was only blackness. The skull chattered away about the dangers that lay ahead and the recommended means of avoiding the worst of them, heedless of the approach of the three characters.

Something suddenly occurred to Goofy, and his face fell. "Uh-oh," he muttered.

"What is it?" asked Minnie.

"We're about to hit the first drop," he cringed.

"So?" Donald prompted.

"What I mean to say is, are we sure it's _safe_? What with the swamp bein' real and all?"

The import of his concern hit them. Donald began scrambling about the boat, looking for oars, an anchor, anything that he could use to stop the boat, or at least fight the current long enough for them to work something out (although he didn't really expect to find anything—and, indeed, didn't), while Minnie clambered into the bow and addressed the skull on the arch.

"Um…excuse me? Will we be all right going over the waterfall, or is there some sort of precaution we should take?"

The skull chuckled darkly. "Have ye not been listenin', Missie? If ye want to stay safe on yer voyage, ye best stay seated. And that goes double fer the Navy scallywag behind ye there."

"Hey!" Donald complained, pausing in his frantic search.

"Donald, I think you'd better sit down!" said Minnie as the boat passed under the archway. All three of them planted themselves in their seats and clung to the handgrips for dear life. The boat proceeded to the edge of the drop-off, teetered there for a few agonizingly slow seconds, and then plummeted over the waterfall.

It may not seem that way to first-time riders, but the first drop on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride is quite gentle, and brief enough that by the time it really sinks in that the boat is falling, it has reached the bottom of the slope and leveled off with a modest splash. It is the near-absolute darkness of the tunnel, denying any view of the surroundings, that makes the plunge so alarming.

Minnie, Donald, and Goofy were pretty sure that _this_ plunge would have been alarming even in full sunlight. It was much steeper, much bumpier, and much _longer_ than they were used to…not that the pitch-blackness didn't make the whole ordeal tremendously worse. The boat careened down the transformed flume, jolting off the rough sides and bouncing on large rocks in the bottom of the chute. After almost a full minute—a very long time to be racing down a waterfall under any circumstances—wan light began seeping into the tunnel, just enough for them to see the steep but manageable slant of the fall abruptly end in a sheer precipice a few dozen yards away. There was no way to prevent it—the boat struck a particularly large rock and leapt into the open space. Then came a few heart-stopping seconds of freefall before the small craft came down with a thunderous splash. It drifted, rocking on the waves created by the waterfall and by its own tumultuous descent.

At that point, a casual onlooker would have taken it for an empty boat, for the three occupants had flung themselves from the seats and taken up crash positions in the bottom. Then a white, feathery hand inched over the side. "That's it," said Donald's voice, more rasping than usual. "New Orleans Square is trying to _kill_ us!"

Gradually, the three of them sat up to take stock of their surroundings. They had landed in a large grotto, flooded to a depth of at least a fathom and dimly lit with bluish phosphorescence from some unseen source. The waterfall they had come down was only the largest of several that fed the pool in which the boat floated freely, unhindered by any sort of track or railing. It also seemed to have transformed into a proper rowboat, with a shallow keel, open benches rather than discrete rows of backed seats, and oarlocks on the sides. The oars were missing, however. The air was slightly stale and smelled of salt and mildew. And adventure.

"Well, this sure is interestin'!" said Goofy, always one to try putting a bright face on things. "I wonder what else has changed!"

Donald looked warily about the cavern. Then he muttered something under his breath and began rooting around under the benches with cold fixity of purpose.

"Whatcha lookin' for there, Donald?" asked Goofy.

Donald fixed Goofy with an intent gaze for a moment. "Weapons," he said, and went right back to rooting.

"Oh, my," said Minnie. But she saw the sense of it and joined in the search. Soon, she and Donald had turned up two rusty knives, an 18th-Century flintlock pistol, and a small wooden box containing about a dozen rounds of shot, but no gunpowder. Donald sighed heavily and claimed one of the knives, which still had a semblance of an edge even under the oxidation.

By this time, the boat had drifted into a slow current that was carrying it toward the only visible exit from the grotto—a tall, narrow opening in the stone roughly opposite the waterfall that had carried them in. Their speed picked up the closer they got, and they slid down a much smaller, gentler cataract into the next cavern.

This space was somewhat larger than the last, and the air was slightly fresher thanks to the large gap high in one wall, through which a swatch of deep blue, cloud-daubed sky could be seen. The water flowed through it as a small river, meandering around the fantastic rock formations. Here, too, were signs of life—or what had been life once. The right side of the cavern was heaped with fine white sand, making a sort of subterranean beach that was littered with seashells, wave-rounded pebbles, uprooted seaweed…and four human skeletons, dressed in the rags of breeches and flowing shirts. They lay where they had died, the instruments of their demise—daggers and cutlasses—still protruding from their ribcages and eye sockets. As a scene from the ride that Minnie, Donald, and Goofy knew so well, it was picturesque in a gruesome sort of way. As something that had become real, it was appalling.

"Oh, how awful," Minnie fretted. Goofy patted her shoulders sympathetically.

Donald gripped the haft of his knife. "If there are Dispirations in here," he said, "this is where they'll start showing up."

As if on cue, there was a sudden movement on the beach…but it was only a fist-sized crab, scuttling out of a tangle of kelp. It sidled to and fro, antennae testing the air and sand, before inching over to the nearest skeleton. All the while, the three in the boat watched it suspiciously, almost daring it to turn hostile and sprout eight more claws and a squid beak. Which was why there was no missing it when the skeleton's arm suddenly jerked, swatting the crustacean aside. Then, in horrific slow motion and with a sound like dead tree branches creaking and snapping in a strong wind, the pile of bones began to wrench itself upright.

Minnie slapped both hands over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Goofy didn't bother, wailing in fright and grabbing at Donald for moral support. "What's the big idea? Leggo!" the duck squawked.

The skeleton lurched to its feet, where it stood in an awkwardly knock-kneed stance, its skull lolling to one side as though it weren't quite up to the task of standing. Its arms were competent, however, as indicated by the way it gracefully reached around to its own back, took hold of the cutlass that had impaled it from behind, and yanked it free as easily and fluidly as though it were drawing the weapon from a normal sheath.

By this time, the boat had moved on through the network of caverns and tunnels, leaving the beach astern. But there was no relief for its three passengers, for as the skeleton drew the sword from its ribcage, a singing rasp of metal scraping against bone rang out, far louder than it ought to have been, echoing throughout the entire cave system. And in response to that sound, every long-deceased pirate in those fortuitous catacombs, from the helmsman forlornly trying to steer a grounded wreck through an everlasting storm, to the captain scrutinizing a treasure map in his magnificent four-poster bed, and even the other skeletons on the beach, rattled and twitched and hauled themselves erect. They dropped their rum bottles and prize gemstones and retrieved their swords and arquebuses from their keeping places. And as the little rowboat glided around the bend and into that part of the cavern complex, the undead buccaneers brandished their weapons and hissed, utter malevolence for the three characters burning in the eyes they didn't have.

"What do we do?" Goofy quavered. "We don't have anything good to fight with!"

"Maybe we could pry up the bench planks and use them as clubs," Minnie suggested.

But Donald, scanning the enemy-lined tunnel ahead of them, had a better idea. "No," he said. "Follow my lead." And he hopped up on the right edge of the boat near the bow, leaned over, and grabbed the left edge.

"How's that gonna help?" Goofy started to ask, but Minnie said, "I think I know what he has in mind. You take the middle of the boat, and I'll take the stern."

With the three of them thus perched, the boat rocked perilously under the imbalanced weight. Goofy and Minnie gasped and held on tighter, but Donald's gaze was fixed on the threatening skeletons, which were quivering with violent anticipation. The boat stabilized as the current quickened, and suddenly the closest of the skeletons were only a scant few yards away and drawing back their sword arms in preparation to strike, and then Donald shouted "_NOW!_" and the three of them hauled with all their strength and body mass, and the boat rolled so hard to the right that its keel began to lift up out of the water. It wobbled on its side for a moment while they continued to pull, and just as they came within striking range of the first skeleton and its blade began to descend toward them, a chance wave gave them the final impetus they needed to capsize the craft and take shelter underneath it. There was a brief sensation of weightlessness and a roar of sloshing water, and then a grim _thwack_ as the sword harmlessly struck the wood.

Once again, they found themselves in pitch darkness, as the ambient light of the caverns was too dim to survive diffusion through the water. The three of them trod water, panting in the small air pocket afforded them by the shape of the boat. A few more sharp, axe-like sounds rang out as the skeletons hacked away at the keel.

"I'm not criticizing your plan or anything, Donald," said Minnie, "but how long do you think we can hold out like this?"

"Long enough," Donald said. "I hope," he added after a beat.

There came a noisy clatter over their heads, followed by an ear-splitting crunch as the skeleton that had just jumped on top of the overturned boat punched right through the hull. The resulting splinter-edged hole allowed in enough light for them to see the bone arm and fleshless fist. All three of them screamed in terror, but there was nowhere to flee to. The skeleton punched again with its other hand, making a second hole, and then both arms began groping blindly around the small, turbulent space. The first target they encountered was Minnie, who screamed even louder in response…and then proceeded to fight back.

First she thrashed so forcefully that the boat veered sideways, close enough to the edge of the chute that the next protruding rock they passed struck the skeleton and would have knocked it clean off the hull had it not been anchored by its arms, stuck through the holes in the wood. As it was, one arm snapped off at the elbow. Minnie appropriated it as a handy bludgeoning device and battered at the other arm until the skeleton lost its grip, skidded off the boat, and sank with rocklike swiftness. All the while, she shrieked like a helpless damsel in distress, with some whimpering thrown in for good measure. It lent a certain amount of surreality to a situation that was already pretty surreal.

After the skeleton's defeat, Minnie came down from her battle-frenzy, huffing and whirling around in the confines of the half-mangled boat to make sure the fight was really over. Then it dawned on her that she was still holding what amounted to a severed arm, and she dropped it with a noise of disgust.

"Wow, Minnie," said Goofy appreciatively, "you shore gave him what-for! Maybe even what-_five_!" Minnie made a weak chuckle in reply.

The moment of relief didn't last long, however, as another skeleton leapt atop the boat, and then another. The blows of their swords were more than the poor vessel could take after everything it had already suffered, and it began to break apart. The three characters soon found themselves minus their makeshift carapace, and although the two attacking skeletons quickly lost their grip on the disintegrating hull and sank as the first one had, many more still crowded the banks of the underground river, hissing and readying their blades. As if that weren't bad enough, the chute was steadily growing narrower, the flow of the water more rapid…and the ambient light was fading as they approached a tunnel filled with dense sea fog. They drew closer together, huddling at the center of the watercourse in order to evade the imminent attacks as much as possible, and dreaded drifting into that dark tunnel, where visibility would surely be nil and more armed skeletons surely waited…

But before they quite reached it, there was a noise like a small thunderclap and a burst of light, and one of the skeletons virtually exploded, half its bones flying apart and the rest collapsing into a sad little heap. The other skeletons immediately stopped their threatening behavior and turned their skulls to the mouth of the tunnel. A moment later, there came another bang and flash, closer this time, a chunk of rock crumbled out of the cavern wall, and then the skeletons turned on their heelbones and fled. A few flung their cutlasses away theatrically; Donald managed to grab one as it hurtled toward the water. He held it out toward the tunnel and whatever was approaching through the fog, his teeth chattering so loudly that he sounded like a rattling skeleton himself.

It was almost anti-climactic when a cozy skiff, its sail furled, emerged from the tunnel, bearing four fierce-looking but quite fleshly pirates. Two were engaged in rowing, rather crowdedly, one was cleaning the still-smoking barrel of a musket, and the fourth was standing regally in the bow, stroking his red van Dyke beard with one hand while the other rested gently on the basket hilt of a fine sword at his hip. He wore a blue velvet frock coat over a frilly lace shirt, and there was a fluffy white ostrich plume in his hat. Minnie, Donald, and Goofy were overwhelmingly relieved to recognize the Auctioneer, a friendly, courteous sort as pirates went, and a fast friend of theirs.

"Oh!" Minnie exclaimed, raising her arms to wave at the skiff. The sudden motion momentarily forced her head underwater. She bobbed back up, spat out brine, and waved with just one arm, crying, "Captain! Auctioneer! Down here!"

The Auctioneer's eyes met hers, and he burst into merry laughter. "Well, strike me blind and call me a bat! Lads, look who's come calling!" He leaned over the bow at them as the oarsmen stopped rowing. "You know, normally folks bring some kind of _boat_ when they visit these parts." Then he winked and held out a hand to help Minnie into the skiff. The other three pirates followed suit for Donald and Goofy. "All joking aside, Miss Minnie, how _did_ you three come to be flounderin' about in these skeleton-infested waters?"

"It's a _long_ story," said Donald.

"But if you don't mind taking us to see Mandolin Mike, Billy Willkins, and Long Dan," Minnie added quickly, "we'll—"

"An' Scruffy," said one of the crewmen. "Don' forgeh abou' Scruffy."

"Right. And Scruffy," Minnie sighed. "—we'll tell you all about it on the way."

"Now that sounds like a right fine way to spend the evenin'!" said the Auctioneer. "Don't it, lads?"

"_Aye, Cap'n!_" the three of them chorused.

"As me crewmen say," said the Auctioneer. "But don't start just yet, me buckos. You catch us on the outward leg of a little errand here in the caverns—best save your tale for when we're homeward bound."

"Sounds like a plan to me," said Goofy with a yawn. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I could shore use a breather after all that trouble with those skeleton Dispirations."

Minnie sat up straighter. "But they're not—" she started to say before noticing the keen eyes of the pirates (six eyes between the four of them) and realizing that she was getting ahead of herself. "Never mind. I'll tell you in a little while."

She settled in her seat, leaving no sound in the grotto but the rhythmic slap of the oars, the panting of the rowers, and the sighing of the gentle subterranean breeze.

* * *

Mickey, Daisy, and Pluto had to sneak out of Tomorrowland, because the Martians were patrolling the area in twos and threes. This was not much of a problem—for highly technologically advanced aliens (or, at any rate, trans-dimensional beings masquerading as such), they didn't seem to be too bright. It just meant that it took an abnormally long time to get from Carousel Theater to the silvery "circuit-board" gates at the land's entrance, because of all the creeping and backtracking and hiding behind bits of scenery.

"I still think these are the most ridiculous Dispirations yet," Daisy whispered at one point, while they inched their way around a pylon for the PeopleMover track, keeping it between them and the nearest set of Martians. "Even the toy cannons at least looked like something you might see on Main Street. In a shop or something."

Mickey shrugged and motioned for her to stay quiet. To his mild surprise, she did, and a few more minutes of skulking brought them to the overhang at the entrance of the Circle-Vision 360 building. From there, right at the edge of Tomorrowland, it was easy enough to dash around the side of the building into the Alpine Gardens without being spotted by the aliens. From there, all they had to do was move straight across Central Plaza to the Adventureland entrance.

Nothing seemed to be happening in the vicinity of the Enchanted Tiki Room when they arrived, but Pluto made a very small whine as they entered the lanai, and Mickey felt a twinge of apprehension.

"Easy," he told the other two. "Something about this place is…just keep your guard up, okay?"

"Right," Daisy agreed.

The bamboo-frame doors of the Tiki Room itself were closed, but they opened readily at a gentle push. Mickey opened them about a foot and peered inside. He could hardly see a thing—the light inside was low, allowing the birds to catch a nap before their next performance, and his eyes were still adjusted for the brilliant sunshine outside.

"José?" he called softly. There was no reply, only a faint, feathery rustling that was only to be expected in a room occupied by dozens of birds. Mickey called to the attraction's star macaw once more before giving up—José had conditioned himself to be able to sleep through anything except a slender bamboo cane tapping on his perch. With his own eyes adapting to the dim conditions, he opened the doors a little wider and slipped into the Tiki Room, motioning to the other two to follow him.

It seemed a little dimmer than normal inside, Mickey thought, but maybe his eyes hadn't fully adjusted yet. All the birds were indeed roosting on their hanging perches. They probably thought it was a normal operating day, and were waiting for a Cast Member to wake up José and start the show. Mickey maneuvered around the banks of cushioned chairs and benches, found the slender bamboo cane, went over to José's perch, started to lift the stalk upward, and then thought better of it. Handing it to Daisy, he said, "You'd better do it. I just remembered: in 1975 it was always a lady."

Daisy shrugged and whisked the cane against the rainbow macaw's roost a few times. "Come on, José, time to wake up," she said noncommittally. "Come on, up and at 'em; it's show time…in a manner of speaking."

The bird stirred, flexing his toes around the perch and stretching his wings. He yawned in a squawking sort of way, ruffled his feathers, and fixed Mickey and Daisy with one bright eye.

"Hiya, José!" said Mickey. "How are things around here?"

José bobbed his head. "Polly wanna cracker," he said in an uncharacteristically grainy, monotone voice.

"José…?" Mickey said uncertainly. He didn't like the way the macaw's eyes were gleaming as he twisted his head from side to side, looking at them with each in turn. They looked cold and unfriendly.

Daisy suddenly gasped sharply and gripped Mickey's shoulder with a hand like a vise. Her other hand pointed, trembling, toward the ceiling and the dozens of other perches that hung there, each occupied by anywhere from one to five leering, red-eyed tropical birds.

For a split second, Mickey flashed back to the bottom of the ocean, when he had found himself at the center of a swarm of creepy and hostile sea creatures, just waiting for the right moment to charge him. He was definitely getting that same feeling now.

Then the false José let out an earsplitting shriek, and the birds attacked, and the air became a cloud of feathers and harsh cried. From a safe distance, it would have been a lovely sight, all those vivid colors and trailing plumes diving in unison toward a single point, but all that Mickey, Daisy, and Pluto could register was the instant of terrified anticipation before the first round of beaks and claws struck. Then there was nothing but chaos and panic and the peculiar sort of torment that only Dispirations could inflict. The birds were far smaller and less dangerously armed than the fishes had been, but they brought the added horror of having brutal attacks come from superficially familiar faces. And although their claws were weak, and their beaks not much stronger (unless a macaw got in a lucky nip), they were Dispirations, and the merest contact was like having electrodes wired directly into the sour side of a sensory cortex.

Sooner or later, though, survival instinct was bound to take over, and when it did, Mickey and Daisy managed to dive under a row of seats, and then to coax Pluto after them. As a shelter, it was hardly any less confining than a straitjacket, but it was defensible—the Dispirations had to land on the floor and toddle up the aisle in order to reach them, and Daisy still had the bamboo stalk to wield in self-defense. Even so, they had a hard time keeping their fingers away from a persistent toucan, and the parrots found an especially vulnerable target in Pluto's protruding tail. His yelps were all but deafening.

"We have to get out of here!" Daisy exclaimed.

"I know, but how?" said Mickey, neatly summarizing the problem.

"If we could get to the exit, do you think they'd be able to follow us?" Daisy wondered.

"Should we chance it? And risk letting these things loose in the park?"

"Mickey, there are _already_ hordes of Dispirations loose in the park! At least out there, we have a better shot at outmaneuvering them…unless you want to bank on another surprise rescue from Oswald."

There came another agonized howl from Pluto as a flame-colored macaw got hold of his tail. "You're right," said Mickey as soon as the racket died down a little. "First things first, then…where _is_ the exit?" They had become disoriented during the attack, and their vantage point among the chair legs, combined with the severe reduction in visibility caused by the swooping birds, made it almost impossible to tell one side of the symmetrically designed room from another. But finally Mickey caught a glimpse of the glowing green EXIT sign.

"This way!" he said, waving a hand toward it—and jerking it back as a bird raked it with surprisingly sharp talons for a fruit-eater. "If we can just—ow!—make to the end of this row, we'll be almost there!"

It was no simple matter. The space under the chairs was a three-dimensional grid of steel and rattan, cross-crossing to produce a tunnel that varied in width from a reasonable two feet down to about half that in places. As animated characters of a rather slapstick nature, they could manage it, but it would be slow going, and only slightly more comfortable than the blows from the birds. Mickey squared his jaw and began crawling, fending off strikes as best he could while still making forward progress. Next came Daisy, lashing out as needed (and possible) with the bamboo cane, and lastly Pluto, tail tucked firmly between his legs.

After a few minutes, Mickey reached the end of the row of chairs…but several of the smarter Dispirations were there waiting for him, looking more predatory and less cute than they had at the start of the melee, with saw-edged bills and wickedly curved talons. Mickey exclaimed in alarm and shied backward, the main effect of which was to put a crick in his neck because of the confined space.

"What? What is it?" demanded Daisy.

"They've cut us off!" Mickey said, flinging up his only free hand against the onslaught. "We're trapped!"

"Well, that's just _great_!" Daisy snapped, reacting to the situation, as usual, with more petulance than fear. She recoiled from an extremely aggressive bird of paradise (never was a creature so ironically named). "Where are the Tiki gods when you need them?"

As if on cue (they found out soon enough that it was), an abrupt change came over the Tiki Room. A deep red light, like the glow from a flow of molten lava, suffused the upper half of the room, highlighting the twelve Tiki figures, three per side, that perched on ledges near the ceiling, poised with their arms cocked and ready to pound the drums before them. At the four convex corners of the cross-shaped space, four Polynesian totem poles came to life, the numerous carved faces suddenly shouting "**Hah!**" in such perfect unison that the building shook with the combined volume of their bass voices. The Tikis began to drum, and the totem faces began to chant, slowly at first, but with gradually increasing speed. Mickey, who had only the most rudimentary grasp of Hawaiian, couldn't understand what they were saying, but it sounded ominous. It definitely wasn't the same thing they chanted during the "Hawaiian War Chant" portion of the attraction's normal show.

"You couldn't have kept your big beak shut, could you Daisy?" he said. The birds seemed no happier about it, breaking off their attacks and clustering about the elaborate fountain in the center of the room, as far from the Tikis as possible.

The chanting and drumming continued to grow faster, and louder, just like in the regular show, obviously building toward a climax. Mickey and Daisy cringed, while Pluto cowered under his front paws. Then that climax arrived—the totem poles ended their chant with another "Hah!" and the Tiki Room was plunged into near-total darkness, and with a rumbling and a ghastly crunching sound, an enormous crack opened in the floor under the three besieged characters, sending them (and about eight chairs) tumbling down in the unknown below. As the crack closed up again, the closest totem pole, fast receding above them, bid them a chummy "Aloha-oi, kahuna!"

To Be Continued…

* * *

_A/N: I can hear the outcry now—what, no Jack Sparrow? The greatest character to emerge from the Disney stable in **years**, and she omits him entirely from his own ride? To you I say: don't be silly. 1975 is almost 30 years too early for Jack Sparrow to be making any appearances. Don't, however, get your hopes up for when the story gets to 2005, either—my intention with this 'fic is to focus exclusively on the animated characters and park characters, and everyone's favorite kooky pirate didn't get added to the ride until 2006. And to be totally honest, I would have preferred for the ride to be left alone. Even though I find the PotC movies immensely entertaining, I've gotten a bit burned out on them due to the Disney Marketing Department's decision to pimp them nonstop, and I especially don't like they way they have come to overshadow the triumph of Imagineering that inspired them. It seems disrespectful. So, no Jack Sparrow will be forthcoming here._

_On another note, I think I have finally come to accept that I no longer update as frequently as I could when this story was new. Not only are there aspects of my life that have changed, leaving me less time and mental energy to work on it every day, but the story itself has become more complex and more challenging to write well. The bright side is that it's the only fanfiction project on my plate now that "Excerpts From the Diary of Princess Ursa" is finished, meaning that when I am in writing mode, there's nothing competing with it. That knocks out one of the factors that has slowed down my updates in the past. _

_But we'll see how it goes. Just don't give up on me, okay?_

_—Karalora_


	22. Chapter 22

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 22: Shadows of Adventures to Come

The fall was a short one, ending in a rough landing on a hard surface that felt like porous stone covered with a layer or two of dried grass and palm leaves. A moment's inspection proved it to be just that. They sat up, brushing themselves off (or in Pluto's case, shaking the dust from his coat), and took stock of their surroundings. They had fallen into a sort of cavern or excavation, more-or-less circular, perhaps fifteen feet in diameter, with walls of a dull, red-black rock. The air was warm and dry, probably due to the dozen or so tiki torches burning around the circumference of the chamber and providing illumination.

"Well, that wasn't so bad," said Daisy, working out a kink in her back. "At least we're not being attacked or crammed underneath chairs anymore. I think the Tikis did us a favor."

"Yeah," Mickey mused, turning around in order to get a good look at every side of the cavern. It was featureless except for the torches…and a tunnel about eight feet wide, leading off in one direction. Pluto approached the mouth of the tunnel cautiously, body slung low to the ground, sniffing rapidly. After a few seconds, he stood up straight and turned to bark encouragingly at the other two.

Mickey chuckled with relief. "Pluto seems to think it's okay. Let's go." He and Daisy took a torch each, and the rather scuffed party began following the tunnel.

They quickly determined that it was more of the same: dull, porous stone carpeted with dried plant material. Mickey was no geologist, but it reminded him of the lava rocks that Minnie used in her garden planters—which made sense, he supposed, in light of the Tiki Room's Polynesian theme. After a few dozen paces, he spotted something anomalous on the floor. It turned out to be a scarlet feather, in quite good condition.

"I wonder who this belongs to," he said.

"Let me see it," said Daisy. "Hey, I recognize this! This is one of Pierre's tail feathers!"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course! I'd know that shade anywhere. I took him with me to the salon once in order to color-match some nail polish."

"What I mean is, are you sure this is from the _real_ Pierre, and not a Dispiration impostor?"

"I dunno. Do Dispirations molt? Have Pluto smell it and see what he thinks."

Pluto didn't react badly to the feather's scent, so they took it as a good sign and continued. After a few more minutes, they reached the end of the tunnel, where they found a bamboo ladder against one wall, clearly illuminated by what looked like filtered daylight coming down from above. No longer apprehensive, they put out the torches without hesitation and began climbing, Pluto first so that Mickey could assist his clumsy paws by boosting him as they went.

About halfway up the ladder, the walls of the shaft transitioned from stone to half-rotten wood, like the interior of a giant hollow tree. By this point, they could easily see the space toward which they were ascending—it looked like a Polynesian hut, complete with reed mat walls and a thatch ceiling. Mickey started to get a hunch as to where they were. It was confirmed when they reached the top of the ladder and he first heaved Pluto, and then pulled himself out onto a wobbly wooden floor. It was a Polynesian hut, all right, and a smallish door in one wall led to a narrow bamboo-railed balcony that provided an excellent view of…the main Adventureland walkway. They had arrived at the stilt-house across from the Enchanted Tiki Room. Mickey had never been inside it before, and had always assumed that it was just something along the lines of an equipment shed, decorated to blend in with the scenery.

"Huh," said Daisy. "You know, this isn't nearly as weird as I was afraid it was gonna be."

"Tell me about it," said Mickey, thinking about the illogic of the passage to Merlin's library. Something about the thought seemed vaguely important, but he mentally filed it away in order to focus on the more immediate task: "Come on—let's get down from here."

No safe way down was immediately obvious—the Tiki birds wouldn't need one—but the presence of the ladder indicated that the emergency escape tunnel was intended for the use of non-flyers as well, so Mickey was pretty confident that they would find something useful. What they discovered was that they could step almost directly from the far end of the balcony to the thatched overhang shading one of the side entrances to the Adventureland Bazaar. From there, Mickey and Daisy managed to lower themselves to the ground without mishap, and then Pluto jumped and Mickey caught him—again without mishap per se, although the impact knocked him flat, and then he had to contend with Pluto's grateful tongue on his face.

He couldn't help but laugh…and suddenly he was laughing hysterically, for reasons that had nothing to do with his dog's ticklish licks. In fact, Pluto stopped slurping him altogether and stared in astonishment at Mickey, sprawled on the ground and convulsing with enormous belly laughs until the tears were streaming from his eyes. He laughed because it was better than crying or flying into a rage and breaking things. By the time the catharsis was complete, he was gasping for breath, half-paralyzed with the volume of emotion he had just expelled. Pluto nosed his face concernedly, and Mickey gave the dog's head a reassuring pat.

"What was _that_ all about?" asked Daisy.

"I don't know," Mickey admitted, making the effort to prop himself up on his elbows. "I guess I just really needed it."

"So what now? We look for the Tiki birds?"

Mickey gave her question a moment of hard thought. "Actually, no. We've got the entire park to worry about—we can't let ourselves get sidetracked chasing down characters who can fly away from danger anyway. And I keep thinking I should check in with Merlin and Professor von Drake. We'll just have to assume the birds have made themselves scarce and trust them to take care of themselves."

"Fair enough," Daisy agreed, and the trio set out for Fantasyland.

Mickey felt slightly guilty about just leaving the Tiki birds to their fate like that, but he found that he wasn't actually worried about them. He felt too optimistic. In fact, he felt _fantastic_. The fit of laughter had done him a world of good; the fatigue had been purged from his body and mind, leaving his energy high without a hint of uncomfortable restlessness. His every sense felt effortlessly honed to razor keenness, making the short trek out of Adventureland and clockwise around Central Plaza a sheer delight of sensation, from the vivid colors of the planter vegetation to the whisper of the summer breeze to the little temperature changes as he stepped from sunlight to shade and back again. For the first time in days (or was it decades?), he actually felt _relaxed_.

His good mood wasn't lost on Pluto, who nosed his hand as they walked, wagering that it was a good time to ask for an ear-scratching. (It was.) Or on Daisy, who remarked "Boy, Mickey, you sure have been moody since this adventure started. Less than an hour ago, you were freaking out over the Space Mountain thing, and now—"

"Space Mountain!" Mickey exclaimed, pulling up short in order to punch his palm. "_That's_ what I wanted to ask Merlin and Professor von Drake about! I bet they'll be able to figure it out!"

"Great!" said Daisy. "Maybe they'll have something to say about those Martians, too." Mickey suppressed a tolerant smirk. Daisy was a fine one to go around accusing other people of being moody.

They arrived in Fantasyland expecting to be besieged with questions, especially variations on the theme of whether they had found the next crown yet. Instead, they found the courtyard, if not quite deserted, certainly not as crowded as they had left it. Four out of the Seven Dwarfs, two per side, were standing watch on the rooftop fortifications they had built, and quite a few children were enjoying the open-air rides under light supervision by the Radcliffes and the Fairy Godmother. Apart from that, though, it was pretty empty.

"Daisy, take Pluto and see if you can find out where everyone is, would you?" said Mickey.

"While you go down to Merlin's library? Are you…cutting me out of the action?"

"Of course not, Daisy. It's just more efficient this way. Now, Pluto, Daisy's in charge until I get back, so you be a good boy and do what she says, all right?"

Pluto snorted heavily, but let Mickey know with a wink and a grin that he intended to behave. With that settled, Mickey made his way to the library entrance and slipped inside.

Merlin met him at the door. "Oh, there you are, Mickey," he said. "You're a bit late, you know."

"I am? Sorry…I guess." Mickey was of the opinion that if someone used clairvoyance to predict someone else's arrival and they showed up a few minutes later than expected, it was the clairvoyance that was wrong and not the visitor's punctuality. But Merlin saw, or foresaw, things differently.

"So, then, you had a, er, question about something?" said the old wizard, gesturing for Mickey to come in and take a seat, which he did.

Mickey remembered Daisy's plea concerning the Martians. "A couple of questions, actually," he said while Merlin fumbled with a tea tray. He wondered where von Drake was, looked around, and spotted him in the far corner of the library, fiddling with a microscope.

"Splendid!" said Merlin, thrusting a cup of tea into Mickey's hands. "Did you hear that, Professor? He has at least _two_ questions."

"_Don't start without me!_" von Drake beseeched. There was a series of crashing sounds, punctuated with yells of distress, and then the academician skidded up to them in a small tangle of papers and test tubes and dowsing rods (and, for some reason, a bowling ball), glasses askew and clipboard at the ready. "Now you may begin," he said with as much decorum as he could muster while wearing a copy of _The Life Cycle of the Common Kelpie_ on his head.

Between sips of tea, Mickey described the puzzling specter of Space Mountain that had appeared in Tomorrowland. Almost as an afterthought, he also mentioned the Martians. Neither Merlin nor von Drake asked for clarification on anything, although the latter scrawled madly on the clipboard the whole time Mickey was speaking. And when he had finished, von Drake leaned forward dramatically and tapped Mickey on the nose with his pencil.

"Aha! You see, what did I tell you? Disneyland is disconnecting from reality! People's memories is gettin' all mixed up!"

"I thought as much," said Mickey. "But why Space Mountain? And why does it look the way it does? It's not like we ever had just the building skeleton visible to the guests or anything like that."

"It looks that way because accurate memories are colliding with inaccurate ones," Merlin explained. "Frankly, considering the potential for confusion, I'm surprised it doesn't look more solid than you described."

"But," said Mickey, "what is there to be confused about? How could someone who came here in 1975 _remember_ Space Mountain? They would have to be…_psychic_ or something!"

Ludwig von Drake snickered. "You know, statistically speaking, some of them probably _was_ psychic," he said. "I got an abstract on it, gonna turn it into a book one of these days. But that's not where the mixed-up memories is coming from!" he caught himself. "It's not people what came here in 1975 and went away thinkin' they saw Space Mountain." He suddenly became uncharacteristically serious. "It's people what went somewhere _else_ in 1975, and saw Space Mountain, and then later, maybe _years_ later, remembered the wrong way around and thought they came _here_."

Realization dawned. Space Mountain hadn't been built in Disneyland by 1975, but it _had_ been built elsewhere. Disneyland was no longer the only phenomenon of its kind. And to a young child from the American Midwest, it made no substantial difference whether the family had gone to California or Florida for their vacation…

The phantom he had seen on the Tomorrowland skyline had definitely been an image of Disneyland's Space Mountain, and not Walt Disney World's. (The differences between the two were subtle, but unmistakable to someone familiar with both, as Mickey was.) But the proper version was only two years off, after all—he supposed that the manifestation had struck a compromise of sorts between all the different ways people might remember it…might _mis_remember it.

"Or people who came here after Space Mountain was built, and misremembered the year," Mickey added, almost to himself. He let his gaze wander about the library, and it lit on the double diagram they had shown him before—the one that reminded him somewhat of a yin-yang. He remembered the two scholars' explanation of how the park had literally been moved to Inpotentia, though it was still anchored to reality. But the line between the two was wavy, not straight, and the strength of that anchor likely depended on whether Disneyland was settled in an inside curve, or teetering on an outside one…"I think I understand now," he said. "But this disconnection from reality…it's bad, isn't it? It's not something we want to be happening?"

"I should certainly say not," said Merlin, arching his eyebrows. "We cannot yet tell what ramifications to expect, but that alone should be reason enough for us all to be wary."

Mickey nodded his understanding, biting his lip. He felt the tension start to rise again and quickly drove it down, unwilling to let his good mood be wasted quite that easily. "In that case, I'd better get going. This quest isn't going to finish itself!" He gave the two an optimistic smile and a jaunty wave before taking his leave.

"Well, he seems to be holding up well," Merlin remarked, finishing his tea.

"Let's just hope he can keep it up," said von Drake.

"Come now, Professor. Things are not all bad—take Hypatia, for example. If she is any indication, the Dispirations as a whole might—"

"About that, Merlin…" von Drake interrupted. "It looks like we were wrong. She's still made of the same stuff after all."

"Oh, that is disappointing," said Merlin, his face falling. "But at least she'll remain harmless and friendly as long as she stays here."

"Let's just hope so," von Drake said again. In his fingers, he twiddled a deep auburn feather.

* * *

Mickey returned to the courtyard to find a small commotion. The children who had been riding the Carrousel and the Tea Cups were clustered around a bench, chattering excitedly about something in the middle of the huddle. Daisy's lavender bow was visible, bobbing above the heads of the group, and he could hear Pluto's staccato barks, but some subtlety in the way the kids were aiming their attention told Mickey that neither of them was the center of it.

Whatever was going on, it was apparently so engrossing that no one noticed his approach—no one except little Michael Darling, who as usual had been shunted to the margins of the gathering. And as usual, no one paid him any heed when he began to exclaim: "Oh, Mickey Mouse! Here he is! Hey, everybody! Mickey's back!" The rest of them did not realize that he was there until he was about six feet away, at which point he loudly cleared his throat and enjoyed the startled jumps that resulted.

Daisy stuck her head out of the crowd. "Oh, there you are!" she said. "We've been waiting for you. Scoot aside and let him through, kids." The children parted like coats in a closet when someone is looking for someone else presumed to be hiding at the back, giving Mickey a clear view of the object of all the hubbub, perched on Daisy's hand.

It was in fact a bird. But it wasn't one of the Tiki birds. It wasn't even a Dispiration. It was about the size of a pigeon, with a sky blue body and pink wings. And a large, stubby pencil for a head.

"What's a Wonderland bird doing around here?" said Mickey.

"It's been asking for you," said Daisy, gesturing to Pluto, who was gripping in his teeth several paper sheets torn out of a souvenir autograph book. Each one had the words MICKEY MOUSE written on it in the simple block print favored by the pencil-birds. "Apart from that, we don't know what it wants—that's all it's written since it got here."

"Hm," Mickey mused. "Better clear off, kids. If this little critter has something to tell just me, it probably doesn't want an audience. With a chorus of whining groans, the children dispersed and went back to their play, although most of them continued to peer curiously back toward the bench, on and off.

The pencil-bird gestured urgently with its lead point toward the autograph book, lying beside Daisy on the bench. Mickey opened it to the first untorn page and held it out to the bird, which began scribbling at once.

Daisy read as it wrote: "Mess…message…from…Q2…no wait, it's drawing a heart, not a two."

"Queen of Hearts!" Mickey shouted suddenly, startling both Daisy and the pencil-bird. "Oh, wow, oh, gosh. I'd completely forgotten that I asked her to keep tabs on the other Villains!"

"Well, you've got a lot on your plate right now. Something was bound to slip through the cracks." The bird turned a fresh page and continued writing, and she continued reading. "Let's see…it's about the other Villains, all right. It says 'Shere Khan…getting some support…for takeover plan…but…most want to…get back at…Maleficent.'"

"I almost want to say they can _have_ her," said Mickey.

"Wait, it's not finished. It just wrote 'or.' 'or…stay out…altogether.'" The pencil-bird slumped backwards in Daisy's palm, panting.

"Huh," said Mickey. "I guess that's good news. We can probably handle it easily if just a few Villains try to make trouble."

"Yeah. I suppose there—" Daisy began, but the pencil-bird had pepped back up and was indicating that it had more to write. Mickey held up the autograph book against, there was another spate of scribbling, and Daisy read: "'Some opinions still unaccounted for. More to follow as info becomes available.' Well, that's that, I guess. Good job, little guy." The bird bobbed its head in a perfunctory bow and flew off, disappearing over the Fantasyland rooftops.

Mickey mulled over the bird's report, idly leafing through the pages it had written on. "Something's fishy," he said. "Last night, the Queen of Hearts told us all the Villains had been discussing things together. So how can there be any opinions unaccounted for? It would have to mean some of them are keeping to themselves, and that says 'secret plot' to me." He sighed heavily. Pluto nudged his hand in sympathy.

"Come on, Mickey," said Daisy. "Since when are you the pessimistic sort? I'm sure she just hadn't managed to get everyone's opinion yet."

"I guess we'll find out later," Mickey said.

"So what did Merlin and Uncle Ludwig say? About the Martians and Space Mountain?"

"Something about inaccurate memories getting mixed up with the rest of them. And somehow it's tied into what Professor von Drake said earlier about the park disconnecting from reality."

"That doesn't sound good!"

"It sure doesn't, but I don't see that there's anything we can do about except keep plugging away at the quest. Once we bring this place up to the present, it'll go back to the real world…at least, it _should_. Anyway, what did you two find out? Where is everyone?"

"All over," said Daisy. "All over Fantasyland, anyway. The kids are all sticking close to the courtyard, obviously, but almost everyone else is going through and making sure the whole area is secure against the Dispirations. And actually, the Princes are talking about expanding to more of the park. But they won't change their plans without your go-ahead."

"That actually sounds like a pretty good idea," said Mickey. "But it can wait. We should probably get back to the Tahitian Terrace—with any luck, the others will have finished early too and we can see what they make of all this new stuff before we head back into the jungle."

They started back toward Central Plaza. "Do you think we'll _ever_ reach the point where we managed to solve more complications than the new ones that pop up?"

"I dunno," said Mickey. "Why don't we ask your water heater repairman?"

* * *

A weary, wary trio emerged from the shaded tunnel that housed the exit from Pirates of the Caribbean, blinking in the sudden daylight and casting about guardedly for signs of Dispirations. Rather to their surprise, they found none. There was something vaguely unsettling about that, about the way hordes of the creatures would show up to harry them on one trip through a given area, only to vanish utterly by the next time they approached the same area. It had happened in Adventureland after their first foray into the jungle, and now it had happened in New Orleans Square. It was enough to make the three of them wonder what Maleficent was playing at.

But for the time being, they weren't about to question their good fortune. They simply rounded the Pirates building and headed back toward Adventureland and the Tahitian Terrace, glad for once of the emptiness of the park. It beat the current alternative.

Then they arrived at the table-strewn patio, and the day got a whole lot better.

"Mickey!" Minnie cried, flinging herself into his arms.

"Daisy!" Donald exclaimed, zipping up to his girlfriend and planting a huge kiss right on her beak.

"Uh…Pluto!" Goofy said, feeling he should join in.

Relieved and laughing, the six of them sat down to trade stories about their day, hammer out a more specific plan for the musicians they had managed to recruit, and wait for nightfall…when said musicians would arrive and they could put their plan into action.

To Be Continued…

_A/N: This chapter quite a bit shorter than the last few, but I reached a good breaking point and I didn't want to make you all wait any longer than necessary for an update. I haven't been able to devote much time to writing lately because I just moved into a new apartment, a process which is not only extremely time-consuming, but also eats up a lot of brainpower that could otherwise be used to hammer out plot details._

_On the bright side, though, I recently acquired a fantastic resource for making my descriptions of Disneyland's past not only accurate but vivid: **The Disneyland Encyclopedia** by Chris Strodder. This guy has really done his research, and more impressively, he has done it without any help at all from the Disney Corporation. The subtitle of the book is "The **Un**official, **Un**authorized, and **Un**precedented History of Every Land, Attraction, Restaurant, Shop, and Event in the Original Magic Kingdom," and it's not kidding. There's stuff in there that I had never heard of before, as well as stuff that I had heard of, but never been real clear about. I cannot recommend this book enough to Disneyland fans who want a really comprehensive guide to the park's evolution._

_As a consolation for the long wait and the shortness of the chapter, I have a present for all of you out there in Readerland. While I was in the process of writing this chapter, I experienced a surge of inspiration having to do with events much closer to the story's finale. I wrote it down so I wouldn't lose it, and offer a taste of it here as proof that I will not abandon this thing until I have finished it and given it the spectacular ending it deserves:_

* * *

As she had before, Minnie interposed herself between Maleficent and Mickey, spreading her arms and lowering her head slightly, like a goose defending its young from a predator. "You've _lost_, Maleficent," she said. "Just suck it up and leave Mickey alone already!"

Maleficent blinked. "As you wish, Miss Mouse," she said evenly. Then, before either of the two mice had the chance to get properly alarmed at such suspiciously quick acquiescence, she made an abrupt diagonal sweep of her right arm. The glow emanating from the orb of the staff flicked forward, expanding, and enveloped Minnie, sealing her inside a globe of magical force.

Mute with shock, all Mickey and Minnie could do was hammer against the barrier from their respective sides, just long enough to realize the futility of it. Then Maleficent moved again, holding her staff aloft, and the sphere launched skyward, well out of Mickey's reach and still rising, until _a swirling phenomenon, neither clouds nor wind, opened over the Castle like an evil eye, casting harsh ultraviolet light onto a horrified Mickey_, and swallowed it up without a trace. The vortex closed up after it, but a hint of it remained as a discolored blot on the sky, bleeding wisps of black light into the surrounding air.

"There, that should do it," Maleficent said with calm satisfaction, like someone finishing up a knotty household chore. She met Mickey's eyes for a brief moment, answering his stricken gaze with a smirk of triumph. Then, without another word, she was gone. Mickey was left alone on the Castle parapet, staring aghast at the high-up spot where Minnie had disappeared.

_

* * *

_

So don't despair—not only do I have a solid ending in mind, but in the next chapter, we'll finally be leaving 1975 behind and moving on to the next segment of the adventure. I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with different character dynamics among the Sensational Six and plan to hand the spotlight over to Minnie and Daisy for a good chunk of 1985. Girl power, and all that. I also plan to give more love to some of the popular attractions that haven't been featured yet, such as the roller coasters. Stay tuned!

_—Karalora_


	23. Chapter 23

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 23: Jungle Jazz and Jeopardy, Redux

Maleficent sat on her stone throne and seethed. Diabolo, preening on his perch nearby, pointedly ignored her, for he knew better than to interfere with a mood _this_ black. The displeasure radiated from her like insidious heat, and he had no wish to get burned.

She was frustrated to the point of disgust by the current state of affairs—for all their promise, all their potential, the Dispirations had achieved pathetically little. They kept falling just short of the goal. They had managed several times to cross paths with Mickey Mouse and his little friends and send them fleeing, but no more; so far the do-gooders had managed to escape all but unscathed _every time_. Furthermore, the Dispirations inevitably lost focus after each encounter, utterly failing to take advantage of anything they might learn about the group's movements. They were growing cleverer by the hour—she could tell it in the increasingly cunning ways in which they manifested and disguised themselves—but in some very important respects, they were as mindless as ever.

She ground her teeth, slumping further down in her seat and gripping the armrests with fingertip-bruising pressure. If she had wanted feeble incompetence from her minions, she would have stuck with her goons.

Even more disturbing (perhaps) was the fact that it was getting harder for her to keep track of them all. Partly, this was because she had released so many at once—hundreds, surely—and though she retained some connection to all of them, even Maleficent could not divide her attention that finely. But beyond that, when she tried to get a general sense of their status, she could not escape the impression that there were too few of them. It was as though whole sets of them had simply disappeared—no crippling loss, as she could always replace them—but discomfiting all the same. What was happening to them?

Before she could muse too much, Diabolo abruptly stopped preening, leaped off his perch, and flew to the elevated back of the throne, emitting staccato caws in the direction of the doorway to the chamber. Maleficent lifted to see four slit-pupiled eyes shining in the shadows beyond the archway—electric blue eyes, close to the floor. She held back a small urge to smirk—no wonder the raven was so alarmed—and instead deepened her scowl as the owners of the eyes sauntered into the room, grinning like a different sort of cat altogether.

"I do not recall granting you permission to enter my domain," she said icily.

Si and Am glided right up to the throne, moving and speaking in complementary synchrony. "We are _Siamese_, if you please. We are not needing permission." One turned to the other. "What is saying? 'Cat may stare at emperor?'" "Yes," agreed the other sibilantly. "And Maleficent no emperor is." They turned a sidelong gaze back to her. "_Yet_," they chorused.

Skepticism narrowed the Wicked Fairy's eyes yet farther. "Do not toy with me, little beasts. Even were I in the best of humors, I would not tolerate such disrespect, not here in my own place. Indeed, explain why I should not rend you to dust where you sit."

The two cats traded a sly look. "Because we _know_ things," they said. "Things you maybe should be knowing also, if you are wanting plan to succeed."

"Rubbish," said Maleficent, turning her head aside and feigning a sudden interest in the polish on her staff. "What could _you_ possibly have to offer _me_? And furthermore, why would you even care whether my plan succeeds?"

Suddenly, one of them was perched on the armrest of the throne, right under her nose. She found the intrusion surprising, but oddly not offensive—maybe there was something to that assertion about the status and privileges claimed by cats. "Because we are thinking," said the animal, "that you are having right ideas." There was a soft sound on the other side of Maleficent, and when she turned she was not too surprised to see that the other cat had leapt onto the other armrest. "Even if you are not knowing very much about how to deal with…_mice_."

It suddenly occurred to Maleficent that perhaps she had been too quick to dismiss her fellow Villains, back at the beginning of her venture. The assumption that Si and Am were mere pets, capable of making life difficult for a naïve cocker spaniel but nothing more, was an easy one to make…but maybe the simple truth was that they had never been _challenged_ with anything more.

And they _were_ cats, and as such could be expected to be experts in the stalking, toying with, and extermination of rodents…

"All right," she said. "I'm listening."

Four electric blue eyes glinted in the dim light of the chamber.

* * *

Of all the times of day to enjoy Adventureland, dusk is not normally the best. The tree-shaded walkways, so pleasantly cool in the small hours of the afternoon while the rest of the park is roasting in full sunlight, grow chilly at a nearly uncomfortable pace once the sun has set. The sunset itself is most often a simple affair, as the usually cloudless and somewhat polluted Southern California sky cannot put on a display to match the expectations set up by the carefully executed illusion of a tropical rainforest.

Of course, _normally_ the park really is in Southern California, and not floating in a realm of pure ideation…

The sunset over the Tahitian Terrace, where the Sensational Six (minus one, at the moment) waited for the arrival of the musicians, was magnificent—vermilion, shading through scarlet and violet to the deep, inky indigo of the night sky above, and streaked with rose and lavender where a few cirrocumulus clouds foretold rain in a day or two. For the time being, though, the weather was perfect, maybe a trifle warmer than ideal, but mitigated by breezes that periodically kissed the patio with the scent of sea salt and orchids. The only sounds were the whisper of said breezes, the burring of nocturnal insects, and snatches of Polynesian drum music, floating in from some distant-sounding source.

Mickey had never been to the actual Tahiti (though he had been to both Hawaii and Guam), and he couldn't help but think that if it was anything like people imagined to be, anything like _this_, then it fully deserved its common designation of "paradise."

An approaching noise of singing children, coming from beyond the confines of the patio, snatched him out of his reverie. The tune being sung was as familiar as it was multilingual. "Pluto's back with the kids," Mickey observed, springing up out of his chair in order to hold the gate for the dog and his sprightly retinue. As he moved toward the edge of the patio, he saw in his peripheral vision the sky fade from its lush tropical sunset palette to a much more prosaic gradient of orange, olive, and dark teal.

Pluto was obviously very pleased with himself as he trotted up the walkway in perfect time to the children's singing—his ears stood erect and bent forward like upside-down L's, his chest puffed out with pride. Two of the youngsters—Anneliese and Tikaani—rode on his back, while the other four pranced alongside. All six kids were way happier than they had any right to be, given what they were about to be part of.

Mickey held the patio gate open for them. "Did you run into any trouble?" he asked Pluto. A vigorous headshake was the reply. "Good. C'mon in and have a seat, kids. The others should be along any minute."

Sure enough, hardly had he finished speaking when he began to hear the slap of several pairs of webbed feet approaching. A moment later, the owners of the feet came into view: four ganders, smartly dressed in waistcoats and bowler hats and conversing in tones that covered the full male vocal range. They nearly collided at the patio gate with another group arriving from the opposite direction: three pirates, two of them carrying a mandolin and a concertina, and a scruffy dog. Both pirates and ganders being generally aggressive sorts, at least when they aren't singing, a full-scale squabble threatened to break out until Mickey intervened. Minnie sprang up from her seat to help him see them into the patio. Mere seconds after _that_ was done, a few twanging sounds from the direction of New Orleans Square indicated that the Bear Rugs were on their way, tuning their homemade bluegrass instruments as they went.

The delegation from the Haunted Mansion was, naturally enough, the last to arrive, once all traces of daylight were gone from the western sky. An elegant hearse drawn by an equally elegant (but completely invisible) horse pulled up alongside the Tahitian Terrace. The driver—a skeletally gaunt man in Victorian attire—descended from his seat with funereal slowness, shuffled around to the rear of the hearse, and unloaded five crates that turned out to contain the Phantom Five, better known as the Singing Busts. Five large marble busts, faintly phosphorescent in the dim light of nighttime. The one with the most profoundly _basso_ voice, Uncle Theodore by name, was in two pieces, broken somewhere around his necktie, so that the hearse driver had to prop his head precariously against his shoulders in order for him to be anything close to upright on the ground.

"I don't know about this," Daisy muttered at the sight of them.

"Boy, Madam Leota wasn't kiddin', was she?" said Goofy, seemingly out of nowhere. At the others' confused looks, he continued. "Well, she _said_ some of the musicians in the Haunted Mansion don't have hands. I guess she was talkin' about these guys."

"They don't have feet either," Donald pointed out. "And they look awful heavy."

"Oh, not to worry, I've been on a diet," said Ned Nub, the second tenor. Having finished unpacking all five of them, the hearse driver returned to his seat, turned wordlessly toward Mickey with a blank gaze in his bulging eyes, saluted, and then flicked the invisible horse's reins. They all watched the grim coach depart, trailing ectoplasmic mist from its ostrich-plume decorations.

"So," said Mickey, his voice quavering slightly. "That's everyone. Let's get this show on the river!"

* * *

It would have been too much to expect the _Zambezi Miss_ a second time, and the boat waiting at the Jungle Cruise dock was in fact the _Nile Princess_. But strangely enough, the skipper at the helm was none other than Joe, wavy hair, freckles and all. Mickey wasn't sure what to make of that, but he _was_ pretty sure that it didn't matter a whole lot.

"You came _back_?" Joe exclaimed, in full self-deprecation mode. "You were lucky enough to survive the Jungle Cruise _once_; why tempt fate by taking a second trip?"

"Oh, your jokes weren't _that_ bad, Joe," said Minnie. "Come on, fellas!" She waved the rest of the group forward as she boarded the boat herself.

"And you brought _friends_?" said Joe. "I guess it's true: misery does love company."

Minnie was followed by Daisy and Pluto, who were followed by the "it's a small world" children, who were followed by the ganders from America Sings, who were followed by the Bear Rugs, who were followed by the pirate musicians and Scruffy. Bringing up the rear were Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, staggering under the divided weight of the Singing Busts. Altogether, it made for a crowded boat that sat almost too low in the water for comfort.

Joe warily eyeballed the rippling surface of the river as it threatened to slop over the sides of the vessel. "This is going to be an interesting trip," he muttered, starting up the boat.

"You have no idea," Donald confided, plopping down his share of the Phantom Five at his feet.

The tour got underway, and it quickly became evident that however eerie and alive the jungle had been earlier that day, it was all the more so now that it was night. The tiger wasn't in its normal spot in the temple ruins, but its soft growling could be heard among the nearby foliage, and Joe's spotlight flashed briefly upon slinking stripes. The air rang with frog and insect calls, and the water swished with the movements of snakes and crocodiles. In the aggregate, it was alarming enough that Joe stammered and stumbled over his spiel of jokes and finally gave up altogether, which was just as well, because the passengers weren't really listening anyway. They were listening to the predatory-sounding rustles in the brush around them, and between instances of that, to Mickey's attempt at a pep talk.

"This won't be easy—in fact, it'll be the ultimate test of our musical skills _and_ our, um, scrappiness." He didn't want to be so explicit as to say _combat_ even though he knew it would very likely be involved. "We'll need to combine teamwork, improvisation, and split-second timing in order to stay ahead of our opponents long enough to break the spell they have over King Louie."

"No offense, Mickey," said Uncle Theodore, "but just what are we _doing_?"

"You guys didn't _tell_ them?" said Daisy.

"It's complicated," Minnie said shortly. "Uncle Theodore, what we're doing—in a nutshell—is fighting monsters with music. Evil creatures are using music to keep King Louie under some kind of mind control, and we're hoping to counteract it."

"Right," said Mickey, picking up the thread again. "So we'll need the teams to switch off pretty quickly, keep the Dispirations from using _their_ music to cancel us out. And even so…" He exhaled stiffly. "…I suspect this is going to be as much a battle as a concert. So whenever you're not performing, keep an eye on whoever is and protect them from…well, anything."

By this time, they had reached the Elephants' Bathing Pool, which was a far cry from the scene that had prevailed earlier: the site's pachyderm patrons had abandoned it for the evening, with the exception of Bertha, the elderly cow who always monopolized the waterfall/shower. She was a welcome sight in the dark jungle, but too self-absorbed to be more than a familiar landmark as the _Nile Princess_ cruised by.

"Shoot! We're almost there!" Mickey realized. "And there's no way Fido can carry all of us!"

"No problem, Mickey," Donald piped up.

"Yeah, we gotcha covered," Goofy agreed.

"Or rather, _they_ do," Minnie added, gesturing toward the back of the boat. "Fellas, you're up!"

A moment later, Joe turned to make a godawful joke about the jungle plant life (involving the word "bamboozle"), only to find himself staring up the barrel of a flintlock pistol, while an extremely scruffy dog growled softly, not quite threateningly, somewhere in the vicinity of his kneecaps. He opened his mouth to say something sarcastically appropriate, and a wordless squeak came out.

"Now, lad, there be no call for girlish hysterics," said Long Dan from the safe end of the firearm. "We simply be hijackin' this vessel, see? There's a good lad."

Mickey winced. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"No," Minnie admitted. "But we have to get to shore somehow, and this is what we came up with."

"That's our story, and we're stickin' to it!" said Goofy.

Joe may have been a teenager, but he was no idiot. He eased out of the driver's seat in a way that clearly indicated that he wasn't even _thinking_ about going for his own pistol, even though it was within easy reach in case of hippo attack, and let Billy Willikins take the wheel. Thus the whole party was brought to their landing point with hardly any fuss at all, and that only from Fido (who probably would have taken the opportunity to squirt Donald no matter what).

"Sorry about this, Joe," said Mickey as the group disembarked. "At least this way, you won't get into any trouble, right? Dispatch can't hold you accountable for getting hijacked by pirates."

The jungle was even stranger away from the river. Maybe it was because the only light was the pearly eldritch glow emanating from the Phantom Five, but the trees and shrubs and boulders seemed to change as they watched—slowly, like shadows over the course of a morning, but enough to be noticeable. Once, Tennessee of the Bear Rugs tried to push aside a knot of hanging vines…only to have them dissolve into a patch of fog under his paw, and reform, after he pulled back, with a large flower that hadn't been there before.

"Well, dang," said bandleader Zeke in an awed hush. "This is a right creepy place we're a-headin' into. I'm glad I left Oscar with Trixie back at the playhouse."

"It wasn't quite like _this_ before," said Daisy. "I wonder what's going on."

"The park is drifting further away from reality, that's what," said Mickey. "Merlin and Professor von Drake said we'd see more evidence of it. It's hitting here first because…maybe because the public never sees this, so there are fewer memories to base things on. Or maybe it's because of the Dispirations. We just have to—"

He was interrupted when, for the second time that day, monkeys dropped down out of the branches and surrounded the group, beating the ground and shrieking. Since it was a much larger group, it took several times as many monkeys to surround them. But monkeys were never in short supply in the Adventureland jungle, especially with the Dispirations bolstering their numbers. The wan light from the Singing Busts reflected off dozens of prominent eyeteeth.

"Soooooo…" said the lead monkey, prodding Mickey's chest with a hairy forefinger. "Come back with an army, have you? Thinking of taking over his Swingin' Majesty's domain, are you?"

"No!" Mickey said hurriedly. Then, breathing deeply and drawing on the lingering remnants of his earlier euphoria, he made an expansive gesture. "In fact, we've come to apologize to King Louie for causing trouble. And as a token of good will, we've brought all the best musicians in Disneyland to entertain him, maybe even shake up his routine a little."

The best part was that it wasn't _exactly_ a lie. Mickey _was_ sorry about the trouble of that morning (if not in the sense of apology), and he was definitely hoping to boost the jungle monarch out of the rut into which he had fallen. The monkey seemed to mull things over. Almost as if on cue, the Bear Rugs and pirates held up their instruments, drawing attention to them, the Small World children smiled angelically, and the ganders hummed a beautiful four-part chord—G major, if Mickey wasn't mistaken. "Well, you seem to be on the up-and-up," said the monkey. "But make no mistake, Mouse Man—if King Louie just says the word, we'll rip the hide off every last one of you and make, uh…hey, fellas, what should we make?"

"Curtains!" suggested one. "That way we can say 'it's _curtains_ for you!' I always wanted to say that.

"Yeah, curtains," agreed the lead monkey. "And as for you stach-oo-air-ee folks," he added, pointing meaningfully at the Singing Bust called Cousin Algernon, "His Swingin' Majesty probly wouldn't say no to a gravel patio to go with his new curtains. So no funny stuff, you dig?" He snapped his fingers, and the whole troop of monkeys began hustling the other group toward King Louie's ruined temple.

As before, they heard the ape monarch's court well before they saw it, as the rowdy jazz beat traveled through the ground. This time, however, the subtle wrongness of the music was detectable even from a distance. And when they arrived, King Louie wasn't even participating in his own entertainment anymore. He was lounging sideways on his throne, with his head propped against one armrest and his legs draped over the other, and one hand tapped the back of the throne in a desultory fashion while the other made little conducting motions, but his expression was so glazed that he almost appeared to be drugged. A good half-dozen Dispirations-in-monkeys'-clothing perched on the back of the throne like vultures (and not the friendly, barbershop-quartet kind), crooning their mind-fogging melodies, which by now were also affecting Louie's court musicians quite a bit, hence the deteriorated quality of the jazz.

The lead monkey stepped forward to announce the arrivals, and Louie barely seemed to notice. He perked up a hair when he saw the Bear Rugs taking their places and doing a last-minute tune-up on their instruments. Maybe two hairs. "Hey, a concert," he said, while above him the Dispirations hissed through their song. "Far out, cuz. Lay it on me—I'm always up for new tunes."

"That's what we're counting on," Mickey said under his breath. Then the performance began, and as he reflected afterward, the only regrettable thing about it was that they hadn't brought any recording devices.

The bears, whose philosophy was to start every show with a bang, struck up "Devilish Mary." Louie didn't seem too impressed with the bluegrass style, so they hustled off the "stage" at the end of the first chorus, revealing the Singing Busts, whom the pirates had pushed into place behind them, hidden behind the bruins' bulk. The busts presented an _a cappella_ rendition of "Grim, Grinning Ghosts" and somehow managed to give it a lounge jazz beat that definitely caught Louie's interest. He shifted into a more alert posture on his throne.

The Dispirations' interest was also roused. Two of the ones on the throne back leaned down closer to Louie, reinforcing their hypnotic spell, while the others, including several that had up until that point appeared to be normal monkeys in the crowd, slunk away into the shadows beyond the tumbled temple stone.

It was time to change rhythm again, to cut through the Dispirations' song, so the Singing Busts fell silent and yielded the floor to the ganders, who launched into "Sweet Adeline." The shift in tempo was so abrupt that the crooning Dispirations had to scramble to match it, and for a few promising instants, their control over Louie slipped. "Hey, now, what happened to the beat?" he frowned. As if they had rehearsed it, the ganders let their barbershop harmony fade out and gestured across the space to where the Small World children faded _in_ with their world-famous title song. Their pace was livelier than the ganders' and seemed to mollify the orangutan.

Halfway through the chorus of "It's a Small World (After All)," the Dispirations that had disappeared chose that moment to _re_appear, leaping out of the nearby foliage. They had changed shape slightly—still roughly simian in form, they had more and sharper teeth than any real monkey, as well as dangerous-looking claws. They sprang at the children, whose singing trailed off into cries of alarm—except for Anneliese, who whipped off one of her clogs and wound up to throw it. She was spared the trouble by the pirates, who quickly interposed themselves between children and Dispirations, belting out the chorus to "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me)" with rhythmic lunges of their cutlasses, fending off the attackers just in time to trade blades for instruments and provide their own accompaniment for the verse.

From that point on, the concert-cum-battle was in full swing. The troops handed off performance cues with professional seamlessness, juggling the music like lit torches…and it was the Dispirations that were getting burned. Mickey could almost _see_ the progressive unraveling of their spell over King Louie, in the split seconds he could spare while holding the enemy at bay.

The performers began to get more creative. The Singing Busts and the ganders teamed up to sing "Goodbye My Coney Island Baby" in _nine_-part harmony, producing possibly the richest chords that had ever been heard in that part of the jungle. The Bear Rugs drifted from bluegrass to Dixieland jazz, which they (correctly) thought Louie would like better. The Small World children ended a verse by having Masamba scream "_Drum solo!_" and pound away so rapidly that he seemed to be playing "Wipe Out," an impression that was heightened after about thirty seconds, when Umeko took it upon herself to add in the guitar part on her samisen. The result was a fascinating fusion style that the Surfaris never could have _dreamed_ of. Even Pluto got in on the act, barking a counterpoint to Scruffy's melodious howls as the pirates sang and played "Fifteen Men."

The two Dispiration-monkeys still perched on King Louie's throne did their best to keep up, but the louder they got in order to be heard over the concert, the more they risked Louie becoming aware of what they were doing. He was growing more alert by the minute, occasionally twisting a finger in his ears as though trying to clear them out. The rest of the Dispiration-monkeys kept on getting angrier and uglier, sprouting all kinds of variations on the theme of horns, claws, and fangs in their attempts to break up the performances. Their elaborate "natural" weaponry, however, was no match for steel cutlasses and ursine brawn and childish energy and the determined bravado of two species of waterfowl. (Donald and Daisy were a sight to see—one moment walloping Dispirations in tandem, the next moment jitterbugging to the music, then doing both at the same time, with the same movements.)

And then the moment of success came, and it was perfect. Mickey had the luck to be looking right at King Louie when it happened—all the musicians were performing at once, leaving themselves open to attack, and the Dispirations were gathering for a coordinated leap, when the music crescendoed into a chord of such purity and strength that it could probably have cut through _any_ black magic. All at once, the light returned to Louie's eyes, and the first thing he was fully conscious of was the sour notes coming from above him. He immediately stood up and slapped the two culprits that they not only flew off the back of the throne, but disintegrated in mid-air.

"That ain't right!" he declared, bristling with primal wariness. He spun about, saw the rest of the Dispirations massed to assault the performers, and brought his hands together in a mighty clap. "Unnatural invaders! To arms, men!" The real monkeys, who had watched the proceedings with interest but little if any favoritism, rushed at the Dispirations in a shrieking horde. Their only care was for the commands of their king.

The Dispirations took their own decisive action—they fled, reducing back to normal monkey shapes. The jig was up, the spell was broken, and they weren't about to wait around for the aftermath. "And _stay_ out!" a few of the younger members of King Louie's court tossed off. (Then they congratulated each other for their _amazing_ wit.)

Louie turned a royally appraising eye on the Sensational Six and the musical troupes, in the midst of their own mutual congratulations and hugs of relief. "All right, spill the beans," he said. "What _were_ those things?"

"Dispirations," said Mickey. "Evil shapeshifters from…it's a long story. They used music to hypnotize you, see _we_ used music to break the spell."

"Hypnotize me? Why'd they want to do that?"

Mickey was taken aback. "I…I don't know."

"Mickey," said Minnie, "do you suppose they knew—"

She was cut off by a tremendous crunching sound, the clamor of snapping timber and thousands of dry leaves being pulverized at once, as a monstrous _thing_ plowed through the trees and stomped onto the temple grounds. Twenty feet tall, it seemed to be mostly tree itself—a conglomeration of leaves and lianas in the rough shape of an ape. A mane of writhing vines flowed from its head, its mossy hands were tipped with claws made of huge thorns, and its eyes glowed like a forest fire.

"What on Earth is _that_?" Mickey whimpered, shocked into childlike fright.

"I think it's the same Dispirations!" Minnie said, dragging him backward, out of reach of those gorilla-like arms. One swipe would surely be bone-crushing. "Like the giant squid—remember me telling you? Come on, Louie, what are you waiting for?"

Everyone else was scattering out of the path of the lurching jungle-monster. But King Louie stood transfixed, his expression pure concentrated primeval fury. He was _incensed_ at the new intrusion; his own eyes burned like candles and his lips were pulled back in a grimace of violent rage that showed every last tooth. (Most people, asked to think about teeth in the jungle, think of a tiger or a leopard. But an adult orangutan has both of them beat by a full set of molars.)

He was going to fight, Mickey realized, to defend his territory. And judging by the ease with which the monster shattered a stone pillar in its way, he was going to get _creamed_.

Actually, it was Louie's lucky night. As the plant-thing drew back to take a swing at him, a swarm of squealing winged creatures—bats, they looked like, probably scared up by the knocking-over of their roosting tree—flew in its face, wrecking any chance of it actually seeing its target. Unmoved, it brought its hand down for the blow anyway, but Louie wasn't so enraged that dodging was beyond him, and he neatly sidestepped the descending claws and, grimace upturning into a sly grin, took hold of the massive hand and demonstrated exactly _why_ he was King of the Swingers, so secure on his throne that even Shere Khan never dared try to overthrow him.

With a great heave, Louie yanked the monster off-balance and dragged it to the ground with a crash that shook centuries of dust from the ruins. The bats scattered out of the path of its fall. Then, while the crowd goggled, Louie picked up a stout broken branch and, with a mighty war whoop, laid into the flailing creature with Kubrickian ferocity. For the next minute or so, the air was a shower of bark chips and leaf fragments, most of which quickly dissolved into mist. It would have been utterly gruesome if it had not all been, basically, garden mulch.

When the haze cleared, Louie was revealed standing upon the heap of what remained, leaning one elbow on his impromptu club and buffing the nails of the other hand against his chest. As a pose of regal triumph it was less than impressive, but they were all impressed enough already. Even the monkeys were struck dumb with amazement.

"Well," Louie said, hopping down from the pile of defeated vegetable matter, "that takes care o' that. I bet those shapeshiftin' squares'll think twice before messin' with King Louie again! So, Mickey, you were saying?"

Mickey couldn't remember where exactly the conversation had been interrupted, so he cut to the chase. "King Louie, we need to borrow your crown."

"Done," said the jungle monarch. He snapped his fingers, and a small monkey scampered up, bearing the drooping leafy construct on a "pillow" that was actually one of the temple's old paving-stones. Louie took it and unceremoniously tossed it to Mickey. "Keep it," he said, chewing on a banana that he had somehow obtained. "I'll just make another one. And speaking of creating things, I'd like to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to my jungle brothers in the sky, for their creation of a most timely distraction. Zee-bop-a-zoo-zah-zaaaay," he added in song, for good measure.

Four of the largest bats detached themselves from the perches they had taken up on nearby pillars and bits of wall and swooped down toward the gathering. The Small World children crowed with delight, and Mickey had just enough time to think, _Bats don't perch, they hang_, before one of them landed on his reflexively upflung hand, gripping with X-shaped feet and fanning long tail feathers that glowed scarlet in the light from Louie's firefly-powered party lanterns.

"It is our pleasure to be of service," said the rainbow macaw with the oscillating pitch and over-pronounced vowels of a heavy Mexican accent.

"José!" Mickey exclaimed, looking around at the other three flyers, who did in fact prove to be the other three Tiki Room emcees. "Fellas! You're all right!"

"_Mais oui_," said Pierre the French macaw, ruffling his plumage. "Unfortunately, our beloved tropical hideaway has become, how you say, enemy territory."

"We know. We were there," said Daisy dryly.

"Then you've seen them?" said Michael the Irish macaw, hovering in front of her face. "The flock o' black-hearted fiends wearin' _our_ feathers? I tell you true, we were lucky to escape with our _lives_!"

"I'm just glad you all did," said Mickey. "We've been so worried ever since we saw what happened to the Tiki Room! So you've been hiding out in the jungle all day?"

"_Ja_," said Fritz the German macaw. "Ve escaped t'rough our zecret tunnel. But ve didn't know vhat to do next until ve heard your concert." He shrugged, which looks odd on a creature with wings. "Too bad ve miss most of it."

King Louie began to feel a certain lack of attention being paid to himself. "Well, ain't this just the happiest ending that ever was? I just love hap—"

"Not yet," said Mickey. "We've still got a long way to go before we can claim a happy ending. And we can't know in advance whose help we'll need, or when…so I'm asking all of you to come with us, to see _why_ it's not a happy ending yet. And Louie, you'll see why we need your crown."

"Yeah!" Goofy piped up. "Not to mention, it'll save us havin' to explain everything again!"

After what they had all just been through, no one was inclined to protest. Louie assigned some monkeys to carry the Singing Busts, and the whole motley crew struck out for the river, tired but triumphant…and in the case of the Sensational Six, more determined than ever to see things through.

* * *

The problem, as Si and Am explained it, was that the Dispirations kept tipping their hand too soon. They were excellent at stealth—obviously enough—but they didn't know how to set up and follow through with a proper ambush.

"And you're sure such a stratagem will work?" Maleficent asked.

The two cats simply smiled in reply. One lifted a forepaw, pads up, and slowly extended all five claws so that their needle-tips gleamed in the green torchlight. The message was clear: _We know what we're talking about—our species does this for a living!_

"Very well," said Maleficent. "Let's give it a try, shall we?"

She reached out with her power and began to recall the Dispirations from around the park.

To Be Continued…

_A/N: And thus ends the longest phase of this story to date. I never meant for the 1975 segment to get so huge—I just wanted a fairly lighthearted scenario that would require the Sensational Six to visit all the legendary attractions that sprang up between 1965 and 1975. Instead, I wound up with a Plot Tumor. If I had it to do over again, I'd come up with something different, something that could be resolved more quickly._

_A note about character names: if you're familiar with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, you probably know who Mandolin Mike, Billy Willikins, and Long Dan are supposed to be—they're the trio that plays and sings, with their dog, outside the donkey stable just before the burning town scene. Those, however, are not their official names—in fact, none of the audio-animatronic pirates _have _official names, except for the retconned movie characters. So I came up with those names myself, figuring them to be nicely evocative and pirate-y._

_The names of the Small World characters also are not official—to the best of my knowledge, they, like the pirates, do not have any official names (unless the names on the mermaids' fishtail stockings in the holiday season overlay are meant to be official). But my sister and I think they should, so not too long ago, we sat down with a bunch of baby-name books and assigned ethnically appropriate names to at least one girl and one boy from each country represented, unless said country doesn't have both a girl and a boy. The six featured here are just the tip of the iceberg._

_On the other hand, the Singing Busts _do_ have official names, which I have used. The full roster, from left to right as they are placed in the graveyard, is Rollo Rumkin, Uncle Theodore, Cousin Algernon, Ned Nub, and Phineas P. Pock (not to be confused with the Haunted Mansion's _other_ Phineas, who stands near the end of the ride with his top hat and carpetbag, thumbing a ride). I originally had a drawn-out conversation between all five busts so that I could reveal all their names, but it didn't add anything to the chapter and I wound up axing it. As for the vocal ranges I've attributed to Ned and Algie, I basically just picked out of a hat. The thing is, only one of the busts has a specific voice actor—Uncle Theodore, whose solo lines make it obvious that he is voiced by the great Thurl Ravenscroft. The other four busts are collectively voiced by the other _three_ Mellomen—Bill Lee, Bill Cole, and Gene Merlino (or possibly Max Smith, depending upon when "Grim, Grinning Ghosts" was recorded). This has been your Disneyland Trivia Tidbit for the day._

_—Karalora_


	24. Chapter 24

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 24: Closing in on Complications

Mickey had planned to get everyone in Fantasyland out to Central Plaza before he placed the Light Crown, but it turned out not to be necessary. A procession of pirates, bears, monkeys carrying haunted statuary, waistcoat-wearing ganders, tropical birds, and children in national costume, most of them singing and/or playing some kind of instrument, is the sort of thing that stands out even in Disneyland. So when the whole assortment arrived before Sleeping Beauty Castle with Mickey at the lead, bearing the newly materialized Light Crown aloft like a trophy (which it was), they found most of their fellow characters already waiting for them, applauding their success.

Mickey felt he should say something significant, but he seemed to have left his eloquence back in the jungle. "So, uh…" he babbled. "I guess it's that time again." He turned his gaze up the castle, to the spot above the Rocket Crown where the Light Crown belonged. From the vantage point of the drawbridge, it looked very far away indeed, practically inaccessible. He knew it _was_ accessible, of course…but after all he'd been through, he wasn't looking forward to climbing all those stairs again.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Minnie's. "Come on," she said gently, as though reading his mind. "It won't be so bad if we go up together."

"Let's all go up!" suggested Daisy. "The six of us, I mean. There's not enough room up there for _all of us_ all of us—sorry, guys. I want to see what these time jumps look like from up there."

"It looks _amazi_—aw, heck, you'll find out in a few minutes. Let's go!" said Mickey. Halfway reenergized, he led the rest of the Sensational Six inside the Castle and up to the parapet. "Hold onto your hats and hair bows," he advised the others. Then he took careful aim, tossed the Light Crown, and watched it arc through the air and settle neatly over the highest spire.

For the third time came the unsettling but thrilling sensation of space rushing by, of time catapulting past. For the third time Mickey was treated to the spectacle of Disneyland's organic growth through the years. The first major event was also a huge relief: the translucent outline of Space Mountain, ghostly in the dark of night, began to shimmer with glittering motes of light that filled in the space between the lines until it was the real, solid structure that he knew and loved.

Then came a sound—a sharp, heavy sound like a pistol shot, cracking in a straight line across Tomorrowland from Space Mountain to the Matterhorn, which suddenly shuddered with activity as its straightforward spiraling double track was reconfigured into a maze of ice caverns, glowing crystals, and the glowing red eyes and guttural roars of Harold, the Abominable Snowman who made the mountain his home starting in 1978. The gunshot-like sound repeated itself, cutting across the Fantasyland courtyard into the back end of Frontierland, where an extremely localized earthquake rattled the little desert town of Rainbow Ridge, tumbled the boulders and low mesas into an extravagantly sculpted Southwestern landscape of rocky towers, and heaved and twisted the tracks of the Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland into the steep drops and tight curves of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Even after this development was complete, the rumbling sound went on for some time, growing lower and more muted until it had melded with the background noise of the entire park. By that time, an entirely different metamorphosis had begun, practically under their noses.

The simple, flat, boldly painted façades of the Fantasyland courtyard attractions were quivering like aspen leaves, the carnival tent-styled ticket booths acquiring ragged tears in their canopies. It wasn't long before the whole lot collapsed in an avalanche of wood and plaster, sending billows of dust skyward. The dust hung in the air, neither settling nor dissipating, and began to sparkle—mildly at first, but the white-gold pinpoint flashes grew brighter and more numerous, until the haze was not so much dust as _pixie_ dust, at which point it exploded. A wave of glittery brilliance spread outward to encompass nearly all of Fantasyland, leaving magnificent changes in its wake. The outdoor spinning rides—Dumbo, the Tea Cups, and the Carrousel—were relocated to make the walkways more spacious, and the courtyard show buildings were spruced up with gorgeous Old European architectural theming that blended almost seamlessly with the Castle. The Fantasyland Theater was completely repurposed into a ride and an eatery: Pinocchio's Daring Journey and the matching Village Haus restaurant. Mickey smiled, even while he braced himself for the remainder of the trip through time—Pinocchio had been missing his ride, and would be glad to have it back.

The transformation was winding down, but there was still one more major change to go. An unused meadow at the north end of the park, just west of "it's a small world," suddenly collapsed into a deep, sloping pit. Out of the sides of the pit unfolded banks of aluminum benches and the shell of a large theatre stage, while the bottom congealed into a broad dance floor. Colored lasers flashed through fog from smoke machines, announcing the arrival of Videopolis, Disneyland's combination amphitheatre and dance club…as well as leaving no room for doubt that they were arriving in the Eighties. Only then did the passage of time return to normal, leaving the Sensational Six breathless with exhilarated wonder.

Goofy was the first to find his voice. "Wowee, Mickey! That was better'n amazing—it was…uh…_outstandtabulous_! And it really makes ya think, don't it?"

"Think about what?" queried Donald.

Goofy pondered that for a moment. "Uh…just think, I think," he finally replied.

Mickey chuckled. "Well, it makes _me_ think about how we still need to make it happen two more times. Let's head down, bring everyone up to speed, and then get a good night's sleep for the next phase of this thing. With any luck, it won't be half as complicated as the last one."

"No kidding!" Minnie agreed.

Only a small handful of films had come out of Disney Animation between 1975 and 1985, and the characters retrieved from Inpotentia this time around were the fewest yet…but one of them was also the _largest_ yet: Elliott the dragon, whose happy clucks and snorts dominated the noise of the latest reunion. At the other end of the scale were Bernard and Miss Bianca of the Rescue Aid Society, looking somewhat embarrassed at having been the rescuees for once. There were also Tod the fox and Copper the hound, and even Taran, Gurgi, and Princess Eilonwy, who didn't normally have much contact with the rest of the Disney Family, but had been affected with the others.

And that, sadly enough, was it. Mickey consoled himself with the thought that the next jump forward would free several times as many characters, and the one after that more still…and then the quest would be over, the Family would be restored, the _park_ would be restored, and they could all get back to the business of bringing joy to humanity.

The first few minutes after the Sensational Six stepped back out onto the Castle drawbridge were, of course, absolute chaos…the good kind of chaos. Then Mickey whistled for order.

"Here's the game plan," he said. "You guys have done a great job securing Fantasyland, but we can't take Disneyland back from the Dispirations if most of us just hole up in one spot. We need to take this fight to the enemy on as many fronts as possible." He stumbled slightly over the words; he wasn't used to military-style jargon. "So first thing in the morning, get all the kids and non-fighters over to 'it's a small world,' along with a few defenders, and the rest of you spread out into the park and take down any Dispirations you find. Now, I don't know if those things are getting stronger, but they're definitely getting smarter—" ("I _knew_ it!" muttered Donald.) "—so we need to fight as smart as we can. We've already got the home field advantage…but we can enhance that by having everyone stick to their own territory as much as possible. Elliott, patrol Main Street, O'Malley, you and your posse cover New Orleans Square, that sort of thing. And the flyers can take turns spotting and relaying messages for everyone else."

Elliott made a series of questioning grunts and disappeared with a _pop_.

"Good idea," said Mickey. "_We_ can ambush _them_ for a change." Purring with self-satisfaction, Elliott faded back into visibility. "Meanwhile, the six of us will be tracking down the next crown, and with any luck, all the activity will give us some cover. So! Are ya all with me?"

The cheer of affirmation was tremendous.

* * *

The meeting had long since broken up, most of the attendees departed for home—for such homes as they had. Yet the Queen of Hearts still lingered in the Villains' Lair, traipsing through the corridors and side rooms in the hope of "unexpectedly" meeting another straggler, whom she could then chat up—strictly on a small-talk basis, of course—and in the process "coincidentally" glean hints as to her fellow Villains' plans concerning the crisis. (She was good at small talk, having taken special lessons as a young Princess of Hearts.)

It was during her fourth circuit that she finally heard voices. Two of them, coming from the kitchen.

"All right, darling. Pick your poison." That was Cruella De Vil.

The Queen of Hearts didn't recognize the second voice—also female, and shrill, but with a chirpy inflection that suggested the speaker was trying (and failing) to affect an upper-class accent. "Tequila, straight up. In fact, don't even pour it—just give me the bottle."

"All right," said Cruella, "but take it easy. That stuff'll kill you."

The Queen reached the door to the kitchen and had a peek inside. There was Cruella, leaning against one of the stainless-steel counters with her cigarette holder in one hand and a glass of something bubbly in the other. Next to her was her tequila-drinking colleague, a rather shopworn woman with a veritable mop of vermilion hair and too much makeup applied too hastily. The Queen of Hearts recognized Madam Medusa, whom she knew by sight, just not by sound. _Mickey must have managed to place another crown_, she realized with a little thrill of vicarious triumph.

She wasn't at all surprised to see the two of them together, given the similarities in their personalities and priorities. Clearly Cruella was consoling Medusa after the latter's recent return from Inpotentia. It seemed an excellent opportunity to do some of the aforementioned hint-gleaning, so the Queen of Hearts smoothed her gown and swept into the kitchen, feigning something akin to distress.

"Ugh! What a day! That Maleficent certainly has a lot to answer for, am I right?"

"Oh, stuff a sock in it, you Monte Carlo reject," Madam Medusa sniffed. "It's not like _you_ were affected."

"Well, I might have been," the Queen of Hearts said. "_She_ obviously doesn't care _whom_ she devastates!"

Cruella smiled venomously. "Yes, darling, I saw you at yesterday's meeting. There's no need to pretend to be insightful."

The Queen glowered, her dander rising. This was _exactly_ why she didn't deal much with the other Villains. She put on her best icy smile and dropped a metaphorical lure into the figurative waters of the conversation: "At any rate, I'm glad for once that that mouse is such a meddler. Aren't you?"

Madam Medusa choked on her tequila and wound up spitting most of it out. She and Cruella traded incredulous looks.

"I did _not_ just hear you say that," Medusa said with a bitterly ironic chuckle.

"'For once,' you're glad of it?" said Cruella. "You know, _darling_, where I come from, we consider that sort of thing _protesting too much_."

"Well…I…" the Queen of Hearts sputtered.

"Come to think of it, it seems like you've been on a completely different page from the rest of us all along, doesn't it?" Cruella continued, straightening up. "You've been doing an awful lot of looking and listening while we've all been talking, and that's not like you at all."

"Cruella, you don't suppose…?" said Medusa.

"As a matter of fact, darling, I do," was the stony reply. The Queen of Hearts began edging back toward the kitchen door. "_Lads!_" Cruella squawked suddenly, and the Queen turned around to find her way blocked by two shabby-looking men, one tall and thin, the other short and fat, but otherwise nearly identical: Jasper and Horace Badun, Cruella's subordinates in crime.

"Stand aside _this instant_!" The Queen ordered them, grappling for her dignity like a bather with a bar of soap.

"Nuthin' doin'," growled Jasper. "We don't take orders from _yew_, 'Yer Majesty.'"

"Don't let her go anywhere, lads," said Cruella. "She has an urgent appointment with…well, everyone who's anyone around here. Medusa, darling, if you would be so kind, have that fellow of yours send out the word—first thing in the morning, we're having another meeting and sorting all this out once and for all!"

* * *

The gathering had long since broken up, the characters dispersed to their various night roosts…and Minnie, once again, had lost track of Mickey. At least this time, she supposed, she had no cause for worry. He had probably just gotten caught up…well, getting caught up, with the new arrivals. (Elliott's eagerness to combat Dispirations was all well and good, but he couldn't have known off the bat what he was agreeing to.)

A cursory round of the Fantasyland courtyard didn't turn up anything, but Peter Pan was on watch again, to the extent that his attention span would allow, and from his preferred altitude of fifty feet or so, he could see right over the tops of all the nearby buildings.

"Peter!" Minnie called up to him, hoping she wasn't disturbing anyone. "Peter Pan!"

He obligingly swooped down and made a gallant mid-air bow. "What can I do for you, Minnie?"

"Have you seen Mickey lately? Since he gave his speech?"

"Oh, sure," said Peter. "I saw him heading up toward 'it's a small world' with Pluto just a few minutes ago. What do you suppose he's up to?"

"I couldn't say," said Minnie, "but I'm going to find out. It sounds like he's pushing himself too hard again. Thanks, Peter." The flying boy, however, had already lost interest in the conversation and returned to his nocturnal aerobatics.

Minnie hustled toward the north end of Fantasyland, hoping that "just a few minutes ago" was recent enough for her to overtake Mickey and Pluto on the way. Evidently, not quite—she rounded the queue area for the Storybookland Canal Boats and looked up the broad, straight walkway leading to "it's a small world" just in time to spot a shuddering in the hedge on the far side of the railroad tracks. The movement, though half-hidden in the dim illumination spilling over from the walkway lights, was plain to anyone who knew about the secret gateway between Fantasyland and Toontown, hidden behind the hedge.

Even more telling was the secondary movement that Minnie almost missed, of a whiplike black tail vanishing into the foliage. "Mickey!" Minnie shouted almost on reflex, despite knowing that he had almost no chance of hearing her so far away, especially over the thumping New Wave music emanating from Videopolis on one side, and the multicultural variations on a theme blaring from "it's a small world" on the other. Sure enough, he didn't. She broke into a jog. A few moments later, she scrambled through the hedge herself, to the strains of the most notorious children's song in the world on her right, and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears on her left.

Minnie crossed the boundary into Toontown and resumed her accelerated pace, wondering where in the world Mickey was going in such a hurry. All of a sudden it hit her: _home_. It was easy to forget, with all that was going on, that they still had their homes to go to, if they chose.

Assuming, of course, that it was really safe, that the Dispirations hadn't infested Toontown in the meantime. Minnie found herself breaking into a jog again, heading for Mickey's house (he was there, all right—there was light in his front windows), worried that everything was about to go horribly wrong. But nothing did, the neighborhood remained peaceful and unsullied, and she soon arrived on her boyfriend's porch.

She was just raising her hand to ring the doorbell when the front door abruptly opened. "Oh, hi there, Minnie," said Mickey, sounding surprised. He had Pluto on a leash, and an air of purpose about him.

"Don't tell me he suddenly wanted to go for a _walk_," Minnie said.

"It's not that," said Mickey, snapping off the light switch and slipping out of the house. "I need him to smell something out for me, and I don't want him getting excited and leaving me behind by accident."

"Smell _what_ out?" Minnie said, setting her hands on her hips. "Mickey, you're not planning to go looking for the next crown by _yourself_, are you?"

"Of course not!" Mickey retorted. "Well, sort of. But it's nothing bad. I'm just making sure not to make the same mistake twice. This time, we're going to have everything we need right off the bat."

Minnie locked eyes with him for a moment, parsing what he had just said. "Oh," she figured out. "What did you have in mind? I don't think any of the characters we just got back wear crowns, do they?"

"You'll see," Mickey replied with a fey smile. "Assuming you're coming with us, that is. I mean, would you like to come with us? It shouldn't take too long," he added almost apologetically.

"I'd love to," said Minnie, taking Mickey's hand.

Their destination turned out to be a large warehouse attached to the back of the Toontown Five and Dime, beyond the stock room—not enormous, but the space inside was certainly well-used, with floor-to-ceiling shelves dividing it into a grid of aisles barely wide enough to walk in comfortably. The shelves, in turn, were crammed with…stuff. All kinds of stuff, mostly in cardboard boxes, only some of which were labeled and all of which were placed to maximize the available room rather than according to what was in them. That was why they needed Pluto's nose. As soon as they were properly inside the stacks, Mickey released the slack on the leash and said, "Okay, boy. Find it!" The dog began walking in a tight circle, sniffing the air. Soon he had pinpointed a direction and begun frolicking off, all but dragging Mickey along with him. Minnie followed close behind.

For the next few minutes, the three of them dashed through reminiscence. For the contents of the warehouse, every last item, were keepsakes: props and costumes left over from decades' worth of animated shorts and featurettes. Although most of the boxes weren't labeled, a few of them were, usually with the title of the picture in question, and just reading the words in the fraction of a second available as Pluto hauled the party past a shelf was enough to bring the memories flooding back. And some of the items weren't even boxed, but sitting in plain view, packing an even bigger nostalgic punch into each brief glimpse. If not for Pluto, catapulting them along in the excitement of the hunt, Mickey and Minnie might have taken forever to comb the warehouse, distracted at every turn.

At one point, the tawny dog paused for another sniff-round, reorienting on the scent he was tracking. The two mice barely had time to catch their breath before they were all off again, changing direction at every intersection in a zigzag pattern. Finally, Pluto skidded to a halt and snapped into a rigid "pointing" position, with his nose aimed at a box about the right size to hold a folding card table.

"All right!" Mickey cheered. "Great job, pal!" He passed his end of the leash over to Minnie and hauled the box off of its shelf. It moved more easily than a card table. He pulled the lid open, and in a mild explosion of dust and pine fragrance, the contents were revealed.

At first glance, it didn't look like a crown at all—it looked like a Christmas wreath almost four feet in diameter. But Minnie was only confused for a second, after which she recognized the circle of evergreen and holly as the crown that Willie the Giant had worn in order to play the Ghost of Christmas Present in _Mickey's Christmas Carol_.

"So what do you think, Minnie?" asked Mickey. "You think this'll do it?"

Minnie giggled. "Do you think we can _carry_ it?"

"I don't see why not. It's not that heavy."

"Oh, I get it. You brought me along just so I could help lug the loot." She kept her tone light in order to show that she was kidding.

Mickey removed the wreath-crown from the box by tipping it up on edge. It stood as tall as he did. That gave them an idea—both of them at the same time, judging by the way they suddenly looked up at each other, smiling. Even Pluto got it—he nosed at an oversized holly berry that had fallen off the wreath, making it roll across the floor.

Mere moments later, they exited the Five and Dime, rolling Willie's crown ahead of them like a great big Christmas-themed hoop and leaving a trail of fir needles behind them. "Careful!" Mickey shouted as a too-strong push sent it just ahead of their reach. They caught up two steps later and slowed the whole procession to walking speed in order to avoid losing control altogether. (A mass of evergreen and holly that large could do quite a bit of damage, loose in Toontown.)

"Too bad we won't just be able to do this tomorrow," said Mickey as they approached the gateway back to Fantasyland.

"Oh? Why not?" asked Minnie.

"Because we'll be going back to Adventureland, I'm afraid."

"Oh, brother!" But she realized he was right. The next crown on the list was the Serpent Crown, designed with a motif of rearing cobras and staring eyes in gold and ruby in order to evoke the most complex thrill ride in the park: the Indiana Jones Adventure, appropriately located in Adventureland. Not yet, however—it had debuted in 1995, the culmination of Disneyland's fourth decade. "Well, maybe with any luck, it'll be a quick trip this time," said Minnie.

They began wrestling the wreath-crown through the gate and the hedge beyond. "That's what I'm hoping for," said Mickey. "Once we get this thing someplace safe, I'm going to try getting another look at Professor von Drake's scanner device. I should have thought of that last time, but I was preoccupied thinking about my dream, and then Donald spotted the Light Crown anyway."

"Sounds like a plan," said Minnie. "May I assume I'm still invited to come with you?"

"Well, I don't know. I don't think I'll need to move anything big," Mickey quipped.

"I'll just take that as a yes," Minnie said.

They finished getting Willie's crown into Fantasyland and continued on until they were back in the courtyard. It was all but empty; most of the characters had packed it in for the night. The only ones still present were Peter Pan, performing his playful variation on guard duty, and the three Good Fairies, keeping a more mature eye on things from atop the show buildings. (The fortifications seemed to have vanished with the remodeling of the area, but this wasn't much of a loss now that the structures were built to resemble castle architecture anyway.)

The rest of the Sensational Six were also there, waiting at ground level. "And just where have _you _two been?" Daisy asked suggestively. "Sorry, three," she amended at Pluto's affronted snort.

"Gawrsh, breakin' out the Christmas decorations a little early, aren'tcha?" said Goofy.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Donald. "It's Willie's 'Ghost of Christmas Present' crown from the _Christmas Carol_ featurette."

"Oh, right!" said Goofy. "We shore had a swell time with that one, didn't we?" He began miming his "Jacob Marley" performance, walking with slow, exaggerated steps with his arms outstretched plaintively. "Ebeneeeeezer Scrooooooooge!" he wailed. "A-hyuk! I still got it!" Then he crashed into a planter railing and tipped face-first into a flowerbed, proving that he didn't need to be draped with heavy chains to be a complete klutz.

"Keep it down," Minnie scolded him. "There are people trying to sleep around here, you know."

"Seriously," said Daisy. "This is the best you could do? We'll need a forklift to cart it around."

"You're welcome to come up with a better idea," said Mickey. "Now keep an eye on this thing for a little while. Minnie and I are going to talk to Professor von Drake."

After a couple of false starts due to the Carrousel having been moved, they found the entrance to Merlin's library. As they approached the library itself, they heard tense discussion within. They entered to find Merlin and Ludwig von Drake crouched on either side of Merlin's crystal ball and holding an understated but very sincere argument.

"Um…is this a bad time?" asked Minnie.

The two sages leaped to their feet, startled. "You might say so," said Merlin. "We, er, we can't seem to find Hypatia anywhere. You haven't seen her, have you?"

"No," said Mickey. "We came to ask the Professor for a favor."

"No time!" von Drake asserted. "We gotta get on the job of finding that little critter before she takes important tactical strategical information to The Enemy! And _this_ crazy coot thinks we gonna do that with a bunch of fluffy spells!"

"_Divinations_," Merlin corrected him with a frown. "And they _will_ work, if you will just give me the feather."

"Nothin' doin'! I'm not finished with my electrochemical analyses over here! We gonna do this the old-fashioned way!" He dramatically flung out a box labeled "Doggie Treats" and rattled it, apparently just to annoy the wizard.

"Maybe we should come back in the morning," Minnie whispered to Mickey.

"Are you kidding? If I know these two, they'll be even worse by morning." He raised his voice. "Professor von Drake, why is this so urgent? She can't have gone far, can she? Maybe she just found a hidey-hole and hasn't come out yet. Pets do that, you know."

"_Most_ pets aren't Dispirations lookin' all cutesy-like," von Drake pointed out. "And you know something? I was afraid of this. I thought it was a bad idea to trust that little foxy thing too much instead of keepin' an eye on her."

"What our dear professor means," said Merlin with a sideways glance at his colleague, "is that insofar as we _don't_ know where Hypatia has gone or what she intends, it behooves us to find her post-haste."

"Well…can you put it off long enough to give us a hand finding the next crown?" said Mickey. "It should only take a few minutes—I just wanted to check the Cosmoscope in your lab."

"That clunky old thing?" von Drake scoffed. "I got rid of it back in 1972. Technology marches on, you know how it is."

"Oh," Mickey said, crestfallen. "Well, in that case, I guess—"

"I got something' even _better_ now," von Drake continued. "C'mere and have a look."

Shrugging, Mickey and Minnie followed him to the rear of the library, where at some point he had set up a full-scale, if rather cramped, scientific laboratory. He had stocked it with most of Merlin's alchemical equipment, plus several items that he must have brought from his own lab, since to the best of Mickey's knowledge, Merlin didn't own, for example, a Geiger counter (although you never knew, with Merlin). All this was spread across two desks and a spare chair, and looked chaotic to the untrained eye. But von Drake apparently knew exactly where in the pile to dig, for he rummaged for only a few seconds before producing a squareish device the size of a jumbo box of tissues. It featured a few buttons, a small monitor, and a radar antenna sticking out of one end.

"Isn't miniaturization swell?" von Drake beamed. "This baby here is the Cosmoscope 4.0 Portable! All the space-time-matter-energy surveillance capacity of the original at only a tiny fraction of the size! Plus I painted the casing silver, which I think looks pretty sharp, don't you?"

"Would you _please_ keep it down?" Merlin huffed from the other end of the library. "I am trying to concentrate!"

Von Drake cleared his throat, properly chastened. "Anyway, this should do the trick. Let's see now…" He began punching buttons. Mickey and Minnie moved to flank him, peering at the device's monitor.

"We think it'll be in Adventureland, if that's any help," said Mickey.

After a moment, von Drake located it—a pulsing yellow dot like the one that had indicated the location of the Rocket Crown. This time, however, the dot was surrounded by an irregular yellowish blur.

"What's all that?" asked Minnie.

"Probably a secondary anomaly," said von Drake. "Like the outline of Space Mountain what Mickey saw back in 1975."

Mickey and Minnie traded a look. If more things were showing up out of their proper timeline, they might have a tougher job ahead of them than previously anticipated.

"Okay," Mickey exhaled. "So where is it?"

Von Drake tapped another button, and a map superimposed itself over the image. "Looks like Adventureland, like you figured," he said. "You kids is gettin' pretty good at this!"

Mickey stared at the little display until his brain finally made sense of the lines, then for a moment longer to memorize the location of the little blinking dot. "Got it," he said. "Thanks for your help, Professor."

"Hang on a second," said Minnie. "Professor, why don't you just use this to find Hypatia?"

"Believe me, I'd love to," he said. "But before I can do that, I need to be able to tell it what to look for." He raised his voice. "_And that's why I gotta finish my analyses on that feather over here!_"

"Oh, now, that really is too much!" came Merlin's voice.

"Then we'll just leave you to it," Mickey said hurriedly. "Come on, Minnie." He took her arm, and the two of them scrambled out of the library just ahead of the emerging argument.

"So now what?" said Minnie. "Should _we_ look for Hypatia?"

"The last thing we need right now," said Mickey, "is anything else on our plate. Merlin and Professor von Drake can handle it."

"Why did they keep talking about a feather? I thought Hypatia had dragon wings, not feathers."

"Huh. You're right. Maybe she changed shape again."

"Oh, _swell_," said Minnie. "I hope that doesn't mean she changed _sides_ again."

Mickey frowned. "Well, either way, we need to concentrate on the next crown. In the morning, that is. For now, we need to concentrate on getting some sleep."

"I hear _that_," Minnie said as they emerged back into the Fantasyland courtyard. A welcome sight met their eyes—Donald, Daisy, and Goofy had kitbashed a set of sleeping bags out of some decorative drapes from the Tinkerbell Toy Shoppe, and arranged them around Willie's wreath-crown, like a campsite. Pluto was already curled up inside the evergreen circle, snoring as only a large dog can.

"So wh—" Daisy began, but Mickey held up a hand, quieting her. "Tomorrow," he said simply.

As they settled down for the night in the nearly silent courtyard, strains of music reached them, carried by the breeze from the north end of Fantasyland: _And do you feel scared? I do/But I won't stop and falter/And if we threw it all away/Things can only get better._

They hoped it was an omen.

To Be Continued…

* * *

_A/N: The Eighties were the era of my childhood, and my formative experiences at Disneyland. Expect some more shameless self-indulgence in the next couple chapters. The thematic music in this chapter is just the beginning._

_One of the hardest things about writing this story is not introducing more plot points than I can work through to a reasonable conclusion, or to put the same thing another way, remembering to eventually get back to all the plot points I have already introduced. It helps when I can tie them together somehow, which is what I'm attempting to do with all the subplots involving the Villains, plus one or two others that I won't mention by name 'cause I don't want to spoil anything._

_—Karalora_


	25. Chapter 25

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 25: Storms on the Horizon

The new day dawned overcast and slightly foggy—a weather pattern that is oddly tpical of Southern California in early summer. Mickey woke up stiff, speckled with dew…and unable to see much beyond the Fantasyland courtyard. It took a moment for his brain to comprehend what his eyes were telling it, and then he suffered an instant of near panic before realizing that that ground was damp, and it was just "June gloom."

He nudged Minnie, who turned over in her ersatz bedroll and mumbled, "Is there any coffee?" before waking up fully. She sat up, blinking, and squinted at the clouded-over sky. "Oh," she said. "I wouldn't have expected that."

"It can't be sunny _all_ the time," Mickey reasoned. "Even here."

The others were now waking up as well, stretching out the kinks in their joints and taking notice of the misty weather with varying levels of surprise.

"I hope this isn't a bad sign," said Daisy.

"Oh, don't start. It's just clouds," said Minnie, not unkindly.

"Are ya gonna give another inspirin' speech to rally the troops?" Goofy asked Mickey.

"You know what? I'm not," was the reply. "I figure they must be pretty rallied as it is. Any more might look like I was trying too hard. Let's just get a move on. With any luck, we'll have the Serpent Crown in place before lunchtime!"

On that encouraging thought, they set out. Mickey and Minnie collaborated to carry Willie's crown between them, keeping it well clear of the ground to avoid any unnecessary loss of needles. The others flanked them, ready to catch the wreath if it tipped too far to one side or the other. In that formation, they skirted the Hub counter-clockwise, heading once again for Adventureland, a strangely cheery group under the gray sky.

* * *

Elsewhere in time, space, and reality, spirits were not nearly as high. In fact, they were downright sour for all concerned. The Villains' Meeting Hall was one roiling mass of exasperation at being dragged into another gathering, especially so early in the morning. The ones who had called it absorbed the vibe and became annoyed themselves. And the Queen of Hearts, bound and gagged behind a curtain erected for the purpose of concealing her, was just about petrified. It was a completely alien feeling to her.

Cruella called the grumbling assembly to order.

Captain Hook scowled, tapping his hook against the table with an air of subdued menace. "There had better be a good reason for this, Miss DeVil. We do have lives outside this room, you know."

"Indeed we do," said Cruella with a grin. "In fact, some of us apparently have _double_ lives outside this room. Haven't you noticed who's missing?"

"Cruella," said a sleepy Madam Mim, "lots of us are still missing. The goody-two-shoes haven't sorted everything out yet."

"I still say we should not let them get that far," said Shere Khan.

"Yes, I thought you'd say that," said Cruella. "And because of what Medusa and I discovered last night, I've become rather inclined to agree with you."

The tiger raised an eyebrow and refolded his front paws. "Oh? Do tell."

"_Jasper! Horace!_" Cruella shouted to her two lackeys, who were lurking unobtrusively to one side of the dais. They obediently hurried up to the curtain and pulled it aside, revealing the trussed form of the Queen of Hearts. There was a gasp from the watching Villains—not so much because they were shocked (although it was a surprising sight), but because no one goes far as a Disney Villain without developing a healthy respect for dramatic timing.

"Medusa and I," Cruella continued, "had a chance encounter last night with Her Pasteboard Highness here, whereupon she dropped some _tantalizing_ hints concerning where her loyalty truly lies. And I tell you this: it's _not_ with us."

"Oh, do get on with it," Shere Khan muttered.

"I was just about to, kitty cat," said Cruella. "Medusa! Tell them what you and your henchman found out!"

Madam Medusa heaved herself out of her seat with a melodramatic sigh and stomped onto the dais, rubbing her temples and muttering something about sunglasses. She put on an artificially bright smile and began speaking.

"Snoops and I applied a little of what you might call 'persuasive technique,' and do you know what we discovered? Ms. Wonderland here…is a mole!"

The reaction from the audience was only slight at best—some whispering and puzzled looks, followed by Drizella Tremaine piping up with "She looks human enough to me!"

"No, no, no, you stupid girl!" Medusa hissed. "A _mole!_ A spy! She's been working for Mickey Mouse and telling him what's going on here!"

"Now, Medusa, there is no call to insult my daughter," said Lady Tremaine coolly. "How long has this been going on?"

"As far as we can tell, since the start of Maleficent's little foray into mass back-stabbing," said Cruella. "And that, my not-quite-friends, is why our dear Lord Tiger's takeover plan is looking more attractive by the minute. We already knew about that witch's willingness to defy the Arrangement in order to pursue her little revenge project, and now we find out that Mickey Mouse—Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes himself!—is using our own people against us!"

"Preemptively, no less!" Madam Medusa put in. "Ugh, how I _despise_ mice!"

"The point we are driving at, darlings," Cruella continued without missing a beat, "is that we clearly cannot rely upon Mickey to avenge us properly…not when he has already decided that we are the enemy as much as she. And if he suspects us of some sort of group plot…well, it wouldn't be very _polite_ to disappoint him now, would it?"

There was an immediate stir. "Dang it all, she's right!" crowed the Sheriff of Nottingham above the din. "Maleficent may have messed us up good, but at least she ain't _still_ messin' with us! We've been lookin' at this the wrong way up!"

"So we're agreed, then?" said Cruella. "No more bickering and dilly-dallying trying to figure out whom we are against. We know whom we are _for_—ourselves!—and that's enough for us; am I right?" There was a clamor of agreement.

"Permit me," said Shere Khan, slinking forward to share the dais with Cruella. "It was originally _my_ idea after all."

Cruella was too intimidated to protest. She wasn't used to dealing with the entirety of a large exotic animal—just its pelt, usually—and the tiger outmassed her, a skinny woman, by a factor of about four. "I counsel patience," he continued. "Let Mickey Mouse and his friends take things just a bit farther before we make our move."

"What on Earth for?" wondered Captain Hook.

"Why, Captain…for _reinforcements_, of course. We in this room are a mighty force, but not as mighty as we should be. If we are to succeed in our aims, our strike will need to be swift and powerful, and some of our key players are still missing. I think it wisest to wait for their return."

"That's not a bad idea," said Cruella, who had always gotten along well with Ursula. "Besides, it will give us time to figure out how to what to do with _her_." She flicked the ash from her cigarette onto the head of the Queen of Hearts, who cringed and hoped fervently that her pencil-bird had figured out something was wrong.

* * *

As the Sensational Six tramped once more into Adventureland, the cloud cover seemed to grow fittingly heavier, and patches of jungle mist curled around the trees, making the leaves drip.

"Okay, now I'm a little worried," said Minnie, remembering New Orleans Square. The murky conditions seemed like the perfect environment for lurking Dispirations. (In fact, some of the fog, she realized, might even _be_ Dispirations.)

"Don't worry, sweetie," said Mickey. "We don't have far to go, and we're all together."

"Where are we going, Mickey?" asked Donald.

"Someplace extremely logical," said Mickey.

They proceeded down the winding main walkway of the area to a spot between the Jungle Cruise bullpen and the _Disneydendron_, where elaborate landscaping and foliage prevented guests from straying off the path onto the northernmost bend of the Jungle Cruise riverbank. Only Cast Members and maintenance workers were supposed to go there…for now.

Mickey let his side of the wreath-crown sag. "This is gonna be tricky," he observed. "We'll have to tip it up on edge and ease it through that gap. We'll probably lose some needles."

The gap in question was a space between two twisting tree trunks, itself far from straight and nowhere near uniform in width. "Tricky" didn't cover it—it took several minutes of careful lifting and shifting and rotating and pushing and pulling before the crown landed on the other side of the trees, and it did indeed drop quite a few needles in the process. Then the Sensational Six had to climb through themselves.

They barely recognized the terrain beyond the contrived barrier. Off to their left could be heard the gentle lapping of the Jungle Cruise river, out of sight past another layer of hothouse-grown tropical trees. To their right was the Swiss Family Treehouse, with New Orleans Square beyond it. The intervening space should have been relatively clear so that park employees could move freely, with only a few scrubby plants for show. Instead, it was a forest almost as tangled as the one surrounding King Louie's domain.

Nor was that the only similarity. As they moved farther away from the public part of Adventureland, eyes peeled for the flash of gold and ruby, they kept spotting various-sized broken fragments of tan stone, bearing the marks of human workmanship and unsettlingly familiar. No one said it, but they were all thinking it: _Those shouldn't be here yet._

_Hidden by mist and leaves, the Dispirations massed…_

Finally they came to a place where the ground was literally half-covered with the stones, in the form of cracked pavers and shattered pillars, mostly overgrown with moss and lichens and weedy grass. Despite this obscuring factors, it was apparent that the carvings on the stones followed a definite cobra motif…and that the vine-cloaked hillock at the far end of the space was actually a mound of rubble: a collapsed masonry building, with more toppled snake sculptures peeking out from under the greenery. There was no doubt but that the pathetic ruin was all that remained of the Temple of the Forbidden Eye…a full decade before it had even been built.

"Okay, this makes no sense at all," said Daisy. "It's one thing when Space Mountain starts showing up a little early, but how does something like _this_ happen?"

"Can temples get ruined in reverse?" wondered Goofy, scratching his head.

Mickey and Minnie eased the wreath-crown to the ground. "Well, whatever it means," said Mickey, "the Serpent Crown should be around here somewhere."

_The Dispirations crouched in their hiding places, as patient as cats on the hunt…_

"Knowing our luck, it's probably in _there_," Donald groused, jerking a thumb at the fallen, vine-covered, and completely inaccessible temple.

"Aw, c'mon, Donald, our luck ain't been _that_ bad," said Goofy. "Asides, didn't Maleficent say it was possible to get to all the crowns? There wouldn't be much point in lookin' for 'em otherwise!"

"Well, we're sure not to find it if we just stand around talking," said Minnie. She began poking around, pulling creepers away from stones. The others followed suit, fanning out over the area.

_The Dispirations tensed to spring…_

"Over here!" called Daisy. She had gone right to the crumbled shell of the temple itself, and was now peering through the tough, woody vines that draped over it. "I think I see it! There's a little alcove here…"

The others hurried over, and between elbow grease and Pluto's fortuitous discovery of a stout stick that could be used as a lever, they soon had a large enough patch of vines removed to expose the niche. It was recessed so far that they soon realized it was actually a horizontal shaft, about eighteen inches square, leading to a chamber inside the temple, where the Serpent Crown was visible, resting on a plinth. The gold and rubies glittered in flickering orange light from an unseen source.

"Is there a lit torch in there?" said Minnie. "That makes even less sense than before! Who could have lit it? I don't like this one bit!"

"Like it or not, I'm going in," said Mickey. "I think I can crawl through that easily enough."

"_With_ Willie's crown?" Donald pointed out.

Mickey smacked himself between the eyes.

"Maybe we should go back and find Elliot," Daisy suggested. "I bet he could pull out some of these stones and make a wide enough entrance."

"No, I think I have a better idea," said Minnie. "Someone help me bring Willie's crown over here."

Once the giant wreath was moved, Minnie plunged her hands into it and began fiddling with the greenery. She broke something (much to the surprise of the others) and twisted something else, and then began unreeling fir branches and holly leaves like cable from a spool. "I thought so," she said. "It's constructed from a wrapped garland."

"Um…Minnie?" said Daisy. "You just destroyed it."

"Mickey can put it back together once he gets inside. And this is the only way he'll be able to get it through that little space. Come here, sweetie."

She took down her bow and used the ribbon to tie one end of the garland to Mickey's ankle. "This way," she explained, "you'll have your hands free to crawl…on the way in, at least. And if you run into any trouble before you collect the Serpent Crown, we can haul you back."

"I don't know about this," said Donald. "The last time we did something like this, the trouble came _after_ he collected the crown."

"What choice do we have?" Mickey pointed out. "It's in there and we're out here."

He clambered into the shaft and started crawling. He had to lie almost flat and shimmy along on his stomach, which made for slow going. But the tunnel was only about eight feet long, and after a couple of minutes he reached the end and dropped lightly to the floor.

The chamber was small, at most ten feet across, with only the shaft to serve as an entrance or exit. The plinth supporting the Serpent Crown stood in the exact center, illuminated by flaming coals contained in two brass braziers mounted on the flanking walls. The firelight danced over the surface of the crown, making the ruby eye symbols flash and creating an eerie illusion of movement in the rearing snakes.

Forgetting himself for a split second, Mickey reached out to take the crown, realizing mid-grab that it wasn't going to work. Sure enough, his hands passed right through it, and the evergreen garland tied to his ankle began to vibrate, just as the Queen of Hearts' crown had on Tom Sawyer Island.

"Mickey?" Minnie's voice echoed up the shaft. "Is everything okay in there?"

"Just fine!" he called back, pulling the rest of the garland in after him. Then he untied it from his ankle, stuck the ribbon in his pocket, and figured—why not?—that as it was already vibrating, that meant the Serpent Crown recognized it as a crown even in its unraveled state. So he simply touched one end of the chain to the crown.

_I'm getting pretty good at this_, he mused as the waves of light began washing over him.

* * *

A few minutes later, Mickey re-emerged from the shaft, struggling awkwardly with the Serpent Crown in his hands. Donald took it from him, and Minnie helped him down from the mouth of the tunnel, whereupon he took it right back. It wasn't that he was selfish or that he didn't trust Donald…he just felt that the responsibility to keep it safe was primarily his.

"Now," he said, "let's get back to the Castle before—"

_The Dispirations attacked._

A dark, sleek shape launched itself out of the trees nearby, knocking Mickey flat on his back and sending the Serpent Crown tumbling from his grip. Before the others could react, they found themselves surrounded by four more of the things, which were monstrous as only Dispirations could be. They resembled hairless panthers, but somewhat larger and with more sharply defined muscles…and the fangs and hoods of giant cobras.

Minnie screamed. Daisy avoided it only by seizing Donald's arm and digging her fingernails into it until _he_ screamed. Pluto tried to whimper and growl at the same time, while Goofy settled for just the whimpering.

The one that had knocked Mickey down was still pinning him, most of its weight on its front paws, which were planted on his upper chest. He squirmed under the pressure, barely able to breathe, all of his strength occupied with pushing the Dispiration's head back, keeping those venomous jaws away from his face. It took a heroic effort just for him to croak out to the others: "Get the crown!"

It had rolled several yards away from the lot of them, and Mickey's cry brought the attention of all to it…including the Dispirations. In the split second that the catlike creatures' vigilance faltered, Donald darted between the nearest two of them, escaping the circle, and began a mad dash for the Serpent Crown.

Both of them gave chase, leaving the rest of their kin without the numbers necessary to corral the Sensational Six, and a free-for-all broke out. The one crouched over Mickey, apparently the leader, raised its head to hiss with displeasure at its comrades' rashness, giving the mouse just the break he needed to flail about, find a rock with one hand, and smack his attacker in the face with it. That, in turn, put the monster off-balance just long enough for Mickey to squirm out from under its paws. Able to breathe easy again, he joined the developing melee.

Donald had reached the Serpent Crown just a step ahead of the pursuing Dispirations, and wisely elected to throw it to Daisy. She, however, grew flustered when the enemy focused on her, and dropped it. In their eagerness to take it for themselves, two of the creatures colliding each other, kicking the crown and sending it skittering away in another direction entirely. Pluto, fleeing from a third, ran across it and snapped it up on the spur of the moment, only to find his path blocked as the Dispirations regrouped ahead of him. Panicking as they hemmed him in, he flicked his head and flung the crown straight up in the air. That was the state of things when Mickey escaped from the lead Dispiration.

He sized up the situation in an instant. Nobody on his side was in a good position to catch the crown when it came back down, but Goofy was between him and the spot where it would probably land. "Goofy! Launch me!" he commanded, taking off at a dead run while his erstwhile captor was still recovering its wits. Then it was like the _Mark Twain_ all over again as Goofy, with unusual presence of mind, clasped his hands together for Mickey to step into and then heaved him skyward. The top of Mickey's arc intersected beautifully with the top of the Serpent Crown's arc, and he seized it and then tucked into a somersault so that he would land rolling.

Even as he hit the ground, he heard the Dispirations coming up fast behind him, and he was pretty sure he couldn't outrun them. So he feinted, turning sharply to one side while throwing the crown to the other and hoping one of his friends would be there to catch it.

As it happened, Minnie and Daisy went for it simultaneously. They had better luck than the two Dispirations who had tried the same thing a moment before, and caught it together instead of knocking heads.

"Girls, _run_!" Donald shouted at them. They suddenly realized that not only were they in possession of the crown, but they were right at the edge of the fracas, with nothing preventing them from fleeing back to Adventureland proper with their prize.

"But—" Minnie started to protest.

"You heard him! Let's get out of here!" said Daisy, yanking on Minnie's arm as she started to run.

"But we can't just—" Minnie began again.

"They'll be fine as soon as those things realize _we've_ got the crown," Daisy pointed out. "Let's not waste this chance to get a head start!"

So the two of them dashed off into the jungle. Less than a minute later, they heard a terrible sound behind them: a keening cry, part leopard's roar, part reptile hiss, and part nothing that they had ever heard before. "What's that?" Minnie wondered, her stride faltering.

"Nothing good! Keep going!"

Not long after that, they began to hear the pursuit behind them. It sounded like a lot more than five things. Daisy slowed down just enough to snatch a broken branch off the ground, figuring it would make a decent weapon in the pinch they were almost certainly about to be in. In the next moment, the first of the enemies exploded out of the foliage behind them. Without missing a beat or bothering to look at it too closely, Daisy spun on her heel and clobbered it in the face, then continued running.

"Don't _do_ that!" Minnie scolded her when she caught up. "I thought it got you!"

"Just the opposite, actually," Daisy said. "It wasn't one of those panther-things, though. I think that noise we heard earlier was to call out the troops."

By that time, they were almost back to the Adventureland walkway…but the Dispirations were overtaking them. There were definitely more than five of them, and none of them were familiar. Daisy managed to keep the path ahead clear by flailing left and right with her improvised cudgel, while Minnie clutched the Serpent Crown close to her chest to keep from dropping it. At every turn, they were faced with new threats, from savage birds of prey to giant spiders to mobile Venus flytraps with leaf-jaws the size of serving platters. But of the panther-like monsters that had ambushed them, there was no sign at all.

"This is bad!" Minnie said. "The guys—"

"Escape now, talk later!" Daisy snarled, walloping a Dispiration.

They made it to the edge of the jungle and squeezed between the trees, emerging onto the walkway. The Dispirations seemed to have fallen back for the time being.

"We have to find a safe place to stash this and go back for the guys!" said Minnie. "The panther-things didn't chase us after all—they must still be—"

"Whoa, whoa, back up," said Daisy. "Here's why I think that's a bad idea. Number one: I don't think we can beat those things in a fight. We barely managed to get the better of them in a game of Keep Away, and I really doubt my having picked up a stick in the meantime is going to make a difference. And number two: _what_ safe place? Our best bet would be to take it to Fantasyland…and as long as we're doing that, we might as well put it on the Castle and move ahead to 1995."

"How can you even suggest that?" Minnie gaped. "Remember what happened to you when all this started? And you just wound up spending the night in a locked tool shed! Think about where the guys will wind up! Dispirations will be the _least_ of their worries!"

"Minnie, you're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Have a little faith in your man, will ya? The Temple of Mara is bad news all right, but at least it's bad news the guys are familiar with. They'll be able to hold out until we can send someone to rescue them."

Minnie thought about protesting some more, but decided against it. "Okay, how about this? Since it looks like we're going that way anyway, let's get back to the Fantasyland courtyard and ask some of the other characters for advice. Then if they think we should go back for the guys, we can leave the crown with them, and if they think we should put it on the Castle first, we can do that."

"It's a deal," said Daisy. "Now let's get moving before our ugly 'friends' come after us again."

They took off at a jog, and made it about halfway to the Adventureland gate when a broad patch of heat-shimmer on the pavement suddenly erupted, solidifying into a huge form. Legs like iron pillars took shape, and a barrel-shaped body the size of a minivan. The creature that emerged looked like someone's nightmare of an elephant: a huge black beast with fearsome serrated tusks, tatter-edged ears, and heavy claws in place of the stubby nails that should have been present. It raised its trunk—which was tipped with a bony club like the tail of an armored dinosaur—and let out a bellowing trumpet loud enough to blast the leaves off the nearby trees.

Minnie and Daisy weren't stupid. By the time the Dispiration roared, they were already running back the way they had come. As it thundered into motion behind them, they reached the River Belle Terrace restaurant, on the three-way border between Adventureland, New Orleans Square, and Frontierland.

"This way!" said Daisy, pulling Minnie along as she swerved around the restaurant. "We'll go out the Frontierland gate!"

But as they came up alongside the Golden Horseshoe, with the evil elephant closing the distance, another giant Dispiration congealed out of the air between them and the gate. This one looked like a conglomeration of prickly pear cactus, writhing and folding itself into animal shapes: a rattlesnake, a scorpion, a buzzard.

"_Holy shindig!_" Daisy shrieked.

It was too late to backtrack; the elephant had already rounded the corner. In a matter of seconds, they would be crushed between two massive creatures, one of which was covered with needle-like spines.

"Follow my lead!" said Minnie, wheeling about to run back toward the elephant. Daisy went along with her, cringing all the way. When they were on the verge of colliding with it, they turned around again and ran toward the cactus-monster, which was beginning to slither their way. They repeated this until mere feet separated the two Dispirations, and then leaped to one side, allowing the creatures to crash into each other.

"Come on!" said Minnie, pulling Daisy to her feet. The Dispirations had shattered upon impact, and the main Frontierland walkway was littered with blobs of shadow and mist and heat-shimmer, many of them already running back together or just consolidating into new forms as they were. If Minnie and Daisy tried to continue out the Frontierland gate, they would end up wading through a sea of enemies that didn't even have to actively fight them to hurt them.

"If we hurry," said Daisy as they edged around the recovering creatures, "we can get far enough ahead of them to go out the back way, through Fantasyland."

"I don't think that's going to be an option!" said Minnie, pointing with her free hand toward the Rivers of America, where ominous ripples were forming in the water. So instead they hugged the boundary of the Casa Mexicana restaurant and, as soon as they had a beeline available, darted into the queue for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. As they threaded their way along the winding, rock-lined path, Dispirations began trickling in after them—outsized Gila monsters and tarantulas, grotesque bullfrogs from the river, living dust devils.

"I hope that wasn't a big mistake," said Daisy.

"Here's the plan," said Minnie. "We catch the next train, and then when it gets to the part of the track overlooking Big Thunder Trail, we _un_-catch it."

"Jump out of a moving train?" Daisy said skeptically.

"We jumped out of the Monorail," Minnie pointed out. "You're the one who didn't want to go back for the guys…are you with me in this or not?"

Daisy sighed deeply, but her smile was pure, genuine camaraderie. "Totally, Minnie."

* * *

Much to Mickey's surprise, the panther-cobras had not harmed them. After the girls had left, the balance of numbers had shifted in the monsters' favor, affording them a quick win. But they had stopped at tackling the four characters and holding them down, keeping their claws sheathed and their mouths open no more than necessary to snarl a warning every time their charges tried to move. Being in prolonged contact with the Dispirations was no picnic, of course, but after a minute or so, it was possible to tune out the worst of the sensory assault. The leader of the five beasts paced about the area, visiting each captor-captive pair in turn and hissing softly as if with smug satisfaction. They seemed to be waiting for something.

After a few minutes, something arrived, accompanied by a chill breeze and a brief dimming of the ambient light. A scalloped black skirt hem drifted into Mickey's severely curtailed field of vision, and the tip of a staff stabbed the ground in front of his nose. "Well done, my servants," said Maleficent. "It seems those two did, after all, know what they were talking about."

"You're wasting your time," said Mickey. "We don't have the crown."

"Obviously," said Maleficent sharply. "If you did, my minions would not be so gentle with you. As things stand, however, I find it more prudent to keep you safe pending the eventual return of your lovely compatriots."

"Your holding us hostage," Mickey deduced. "It won't work, you know. Minnie and Daisy are too smart to fall for it. They'll take the crown straight to the Castle."

"Oh, my dear mouse, I sincerely hope they do," said Maleficent, bending down so that she could look him in the eye. "It will save me so much trouble if I can simply leave you to your fate rather than having to work out a way to dispose of you myself. Surely you must have realized where you are."

"Yeah…but I fail to see what that has to do with anything. If you're expecting us to just roll over and let the bugs and snakes get us, well, won't _you_ be disappointed."

Maleficent straightened up again. "On the contrary, I expect you to fight to the last. It wouldn't be nearly as satisfying otherwise. But I think perhaps your self-confidence is running away with you. After all, when all's said and done, you're not really a hero, are you? You are, in point of fact, an entertainer—one, might I add, who specializes in distinctly _non_-heroic roles. You are in over your head, little mouse, and have been since all this began. You simply have yet to notice."

"And you," Mickey said quietly, "don't know me as well as you think you do."

Either Maleficent didn't hear him, or she ignored him. She raised her arms—Mickey heard the _swoosh_ of her sleeves—and began chanting something under her breath. A light drizzle began to fall.

To Be Continued…

* * *

_A/N: Happy New Year, readers! What better way to kick off 2009 than with a new chapter of "Crowns?" Or consider it a late Christmas present, if you prefer. Either way, it's great to be back in good writing form—here's hoping it lasts! And now for the actual notes:_

_"June gloom" is a real phenomenon here in SoCal. Due to the quirks of our local climate, it is not unusual for May and June to average cooler than December and January. Weird, huh? What hemisphere is this again?_

_Bonus points to anyone who caught the shout-out to a special Disneyland entertainment event of the 1980's. If you need a hint, it appears late in the chapter._

_—Karalora_


	26. Chapter 26

* * *

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 26: Let's Hear It For the Girls

She wasn't quite sure who—or indeed _what_—she was, but she was sure _that_ she was. That alone was quite a revelation to a being that until recently had been a _non_-being. The splendor of consciousness filled her, making everything stand out to her senses so loud and bright and sharp that it was as if it had all been meant for her. And there was a whole _world_ of it.

She wanted to share her new awareness with the rest of her kind. There was no telling what they could be capable of, now that they were armed with the power of existence. So she retraced her steps to the last place where she had seen any of her kind. The terrain was not quite as she remembered it, but it had, after all, been some time, and the important things were the same: the rippling expanse of water and the slender gray trackway arching over and around it.

Some of her kin were up on the trackway. They seemed lost. Instinct took over, and she spread her wings and flew—for the first time—up to greet them.

What passed between them was not speech. It was barely communication. Nonetheless, meaning was transferred, amounting to a message that had irrevocably changed the planet the first time it was expressed, back in some Mesozoic forest.

**_Let's play…_**

* * *

The grizzled prospector was already making his announcement as Minnie and Daisy bounded up the stairs to the train platform. "Howdy, folks! Please keep your hands and arms inside the train, and remain seated at all times." They ran the full length of the platform and vaulted into the front car. Behind them, Dispirations swarmed up the stairs and into the rearward cars. Minnie pulled back the lap bar, but loosely, so that they could squirm out from under it when the time came. "Now…hang onto your hats and glasses," the prospector continued, "'cause this here's the wildest ride in the wilderness!" The train lurched into motion.

"Here we go," said Daisy uneasily, glancing back to see the Dispirations beginning to crawl forward from car to car. "Hey, is it raining?"

They didn't find out right away, because the train, picking up speed, cruised into the Rainbow Cavern, the first of the ride's many tunnels. The noise of the vehicle increased dramatically in the confined space, and was joined by the shrieks of hundreds of red-eyed bats. Then they reached the base of the first lift, and the train started its slow climb through the forest of stalactites and stalagmites and glowing pools, toward the cascading water at the top.

Chain lifts on roller coasters always seem to take longer than they actually do, because of the anticipation factor. This effect is increased when hostile creatures are taking advantage of the even motion to creep up on you from behind. Daisy looked back again and wished that she hadn't dropped her stick when the two giant Dispirations crashed into each other. Minnie shuddered in the semi-darkness, half-expecting to suddenly be dive-bombed by bats that were no longer made of rubber and suspended from wires.

Then the train reached the top of the lift. It took a few more seconds for its center of gravity to catch up with the front car, and then…

Minnie and Daisy discovered something, that day, about riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad with a loose lap bar. It made the ride better…_in hindsight_. It made it absolutely _terrifying_ while they were on it. As roller coasters go, Big Thunder is not particularly intense, but tell that to someone who is being bounced around their seat with every bump and turn. Fortunately, the Dispirations were not using lap bars at all, and each jolt bounced a few of them right out of the train. But those that remained continued to creep up its length, pausing to hold on during the rough bits.

The mine train rose and fell and corkscrewed through the artificial desert landscape, in and out of mine tunnels and naturalistic caves, past rusting abandoned machinery and audio-animatronic animals (or perhaps real ones—they were moving too quickly to say for sure whether they had come to life or not). When it reached the base of the second lift, Minnie and Daisy began to wriggle out from under their lap bar in preparation. The tenacious Dispirations were only a few cars behind them by now, and moving quickly during this long lull in the action. Everything was going according to plan.

The train reached the crest of the lift and began to tip over the winding drop. Minnie and Daisy braced themselves as they stood up on the seat. Ahead of them, the track made a sharp clockwise turn through stacks of mining equipment. On the inside of the curve, a raggedy goat perched on a barrel, chewing on a stick of dynamite and bleating with apprehension as the train approached. The vehicle picked up speed, crushing into the turn. The Dispirations were almost upon them. When Minnie and Daisy's car was exactly parallel to the goat, they stopped bracing themselves against the centrifugal force and leaped with it, catapulting from the train and right through a gap in the sculpted rock formations. A few seconds later, they landed—hard, but not damagingly so—on the ground of Big Thunder Trail, the walkway that loops around the side and back of the mountain and ultimately leads to the westernmost corner of Fantasyland.

The ground was slightly slippery, wet from the drizzle that they could now confirm was falling from the gray sky. Minnie and Daisy lay there for a moment, catching their breath after the turbulent ride they had just endured. "Is the crown okay?" asked Daisy.

Minnie inspected it briefly. "Looks like."

"Well then!" said Daisy, sitting up and patting her feather-do back into order. "That actually worked pretty well. And now we can head straight into Fantasyland and figure out what to do about the guys."

"Maybe not," said Minnie, pointing back along the trail where more Dispirations were creeping out of the scenery.

"This is getting ridiculous!" Daisy opined. "Those things are everywhere!"

"Everywhere except Fantasyland," said Minnie, "and I'd like to keep it that way. Come on!" Gripping the Serpent Crown more tightly with one hand and seizing Daisy's wrist with the other, she crossed the walkway and dragged her friend into the landscaping on the north side.

The space beyond smelled strongly of horses, and faintly of barbecue sauce. The former was because it was close to the stables that housed the trolley horses in their off hours. The latter had to be more time leakage—the area wouldn't be developed into Big Thunder Barbecue for another year. At present, it was all gritty dirt, weeds, and a little sagebrush, splitting the difference between humdrum reality and Frontierland's Wild West mystique.

"Uh, Minnie? Where are we going?" asked Daisy.

"The railroad tracks," was the reply. "We'll lead them around the perimeter and try to lose them in Tomorrowland."

"Greeeaaaat," Daisy groaned, remembering the Martians.

"Unless you've got a better idea," Minnie pointed out.

Daisy looked back and saw several Dispirations in the form of oversized sidewinders rippling their way across the sandy, rain-spotted ground. "Nothing I can come up with in the next fifteen seconds," she confessed.

They had to hop a fence in order to get to the tracks, but that was actually a plus—no snake, even an oversized sidewinder, could follow. They took advantage of that to make some distance, but not so much that the Dispirations wouldn't still follow them rather than turning their attention directly to Fantasyland. Sure enough, in less than a minute, the creatures had changed shape, vaulted the fence, and begun tailing Minnie and Daisy as oversized jackalopes instead…which would have been cute, if not for the fact that even a normal-sized jackrabbit can keep pace with a galloping horse, and the antelope of the American Southwest are not called _pronghorns_ for nothing. The two found themselves targeted by dog-sized, dagger-headed beasts that moved like furry bullet trains.

"Oh, dear," said Daisy. Then she and Minnie turned and ran as fast as their pump-shod feet could carry them. They knew they had no chance of outdistancing the jackalopes in the long term, but they were close to the edge of Frontierland…if they could make it that far, the Dispirations would likely change shape again, and with any luck, the new forms would be slower.

So they ran, and within seconds were passing behind Videopolis, silent during the daylight hours. The next stretch was going to be tricky, for the chase was about to enter Fantasyland, and it was doubly important that Minnie and Daisy stay ahead of the Dispirations without throwing them off entirely, lest they turn their attention to the innocent characters taking refuge nearby.

Actually, it was closer to quintuply important, what with the railroad tracks passing between the two layers of the "it's a small world" façade, mere yards from the kids holed up inside the ride building. Nonetheless, the two plowed straight ahead, glancing back frequently in order to adjust their speed as the Dispirations stumbled, their bodies warping into the new forms. When they stabilized, they were…a pack of wolves, or something similar. But very strange wolves—gleaming white, with bodies that were all straight lines and hard angles, except for the golden pinwheels that adorned the tips of their ears and tails. They looked, in fact, like they had been cobbled together out of pieces of the ride façade, and they moved jerkily, like simple clockwork.

"Boy, these things just get weirder every time we run into them!" said Daisy.

"Less talk, more running," Minnie gasped. By then they were almost past the façade, bearing slightly to the right along the tracks as they curved toward their Tomorrowland leg. Even with their stiff motion, the Dispirations were catching up, and now fatigue was beginning to take its toll on the two women.

Minnie tripped on a railroad tie and fell, the Serpent Crown flying from her grasp. She shrieked in terror as the Dispirations overtook her, but they sailed right past her: the crown, not she, was their target. Daisy paused for only an instant before charging on ahead in order to reach it ahead of the enemy. She snatched it right out from under the geometric snout of the lead creature, giving it a sharp kick for good measure as she did so, and watched with satisfaction as the beast fell to pieces and then dissolved into the air. Then she started running again, staying barely ahead of the others.

"Keep going! I'll catch up!" Minnie yelled as she got back to her feet.

"I have a better idea!" said Daisy. She suddenly lunged to one side and slowed down, letting the Dispirations hurtle past her. Then she lobbed the crown back at Minnie. "Catch!"

That was the beginning of that day's second game of Keep Away. The Dispirations were wily, but they were bad at adapting to sudden changes, whereas Minnie and Daisy knew each other well enough to coordinate their movements with very little overt communication. They weaved and dodged, darting from one side of the tracks to the other and back, tossing the crown back and forth, changing speed to keep from giving their pursuers a predictable pattern to follow. After another minute or so, they were properly in Tomorrowland, and the monsters underwent another transformation that slowed them down and enabled the women to gain some distance.

The Tomorrowland train station loomed ahead. A whirring sound from behind indicated that the Dispirations had found their new forms, probably something mechanical, but Minnie and Daisy didn't bother looking back. They were too close to the next phase of their strategy.

They reached the station and vaulted the safety barriers separating the tracks from the queue area. As they scrambled down the rain-slick exit walkway toward the expanse of Tomorrowland's main plaza, they heard clangs and thumps from the Dispirations colliding with those same barriers, and stopped just long enough to catch their breath and see whether pursuit was still forthcoming. A handful of small flying saucers hovered a few feet above the ground, bumping repeatedly against the fences and railings as though unable to attain enough altitude to clear them. They were ground-skimmers.

"Let's not get too comfortable," Daisy panted. "There will probably be a train along any minute, and the gates will open."

"Right," said Minnie. "Not to mention…" She trailed off, looking aghast at something over Daisy's shoulder.

"What?"

"That!" Minnie said, pointing. A fresh batch of Dispirations was slinking toward them from the direction of the Magic Eye Theater. Perhaps in anticipation of the 3-D film soon to inhabit the theater, _Captain EO_, they had adopted forms resembling a variety of alien beings, from hulking to tiny, hairy to slimy, and differing considerably in the number of limbs and sensory organs as well.

"Well, let's not just _stand_ here," Daisy said, pulling Minnie with her as she took off running again, toward the land's entrance. Another group of Dispirations—the robots they both remembered all too well from the Monorail—was visible off to the right, in the area between Tomorrowland Terrace and the Submarine Lagoon, and something had them in a frenzy of activity.

"How do they keep finding us?" Minnie wailed.

"Who knows? Maybe they can sense the crown somehow. Or maybe they're…telepathic? They're forgotten ideas working for Maleficent—they could be capable of almost anything. The real question is, how do we lose them?"

They made a start by slipping into the Premiere Shop and threading their way between the racks of merchandise. Daisy found a display of sports equipment and selected a child-sized bat to replace the stick she had dropped in Frontierland. Then she and Minnie crouched together behind a shelving unit near the middle of the store, waiting.

The aliens slunk into the shop, chittering menacingly in their various voices. Minnie nudged Daisy soundlessly and, with a flick of her head, indicated that they should sneak out the back way, through the exit of the CircleVision theater to which the shop was attached. That, however, meant they would have to cross the open area between the exit and the retail floor, and the Dispirations would surely spot them.

Daisy used her newly acquired weapon to reach around the side of the shelving unit and give a firm shove to a stand of souvenir knick-knacks, which toppled over into a second rack. The ensuing clamor grabbed the aliens' attention long enough for Minnie and Daisy to scamper out of the store without being noticed. Nonetheless, they wasted no time, sprinting up the hallway in defiance of the crowd-flow signs and into the empty CircleVision theater—empty, but by no means dark, not with nine movie screens beaming their images into the round space from all angles. They quickly crossed the theater, then the queue area, and finally exited the building via the entry door, near the Tomorrowland gate.

As luck would have it, however, the Dispirations were just re-emerging from the Premiere Shop at the same moment, and there was no preventing them from seeing Minnie and Daisy at once. They immediately gave chase again, and some of them were sleek and long-legged and quite fast. With only the length of the building between them and their pursuers, Minnie and Daisy cut across the Tomorrowland entrance and darted into the building opposite.

This was the second time they had entered that building over the course of the quest. The first time, it had been the Hall of Chemistry. Now, it was something much more impressive, dramatic, and (given the situation) potentially dangerous. The last of the great educational attractions…Adventure Thru Inner Space. The possibility that the ride would turn real and they would actually be shrunk small enough to visit the interior of an electron shell nagged at Minnie and Daisy as they hustled down the zigzagging indoor queue toward the load area, where an endless chain of blue Atommobiles (identical to the Haunted Mansion's Doom Buggies but for the color) moved along the track toward the wide end of the Mighty Microscope. But there was no time for hesitation; the Dispirations were already spilling through the door and leaping over the guardrails that separated each segment of the queue from the next. Daisy paused to clobber the first couple with her bat, and then followed Minnie, catching up just as the mouse scrambled into an Atommobile.

The narrator was already speaking as they settled into their seat, Daisy still brandishing the bat. Slowly but inexorably, the vehicle cruised into the Mighty Microscope, while the droning voice-over described the tantalizing experience about to take place. The two women tensed as visibility faded to nothing in the interior of the microscope and the word "MAGNIFICATION" echoed all around them. There was a lurch, then a rushing sensation, and suddenly the air was freezing cold. The Atommobile was flying on its own power somehow, buffeted on a powerful wind, and swirling all about were snowflakes, dozens of them, slightly luminous in the darkness…and as large as Minnie's head, ears and all. And they were getting larger. Relatively speaking.

"This is gonna get interesting," Daisy remarked, possibly in a bid for the Understatement of the Year Award.

As the Atommobile shrank, the wind on which it rode became more turbulent, and the snowflakes more perilous to encounter. Minnie and Daisy found that they could steer the vehicle to an extent by shifting their weight, but even so there were a few crunching collisions that spattered them with fragments of ice.

Before long, the Atommobile was smaller than a single snowflake…then smaller than a single point of one. Strangely enough, the force of the wind was lessened at that scale, as the flakes themselves shielded the vehicle. Minnie and Daisy found themselves gliding through an ever-shifting forest of prismatic sculptures wrought in the purest frozen crystal. The only sounds were their own gasps of wonder and trepidation, and a very faint hum from whatever was powering the vehicle.

Now they were moving over the surface of one of the snowflakes. Relative to them, it was the size of a major-league baseball field, a ridged plain of ice spreading out around them, the edges extending away and the ridges growing even as they watched. The wind was no longer perceptible at all; they were being carried along with the film of still air that clung to the flake as it moved. If they looked up, they could see more snowflakes, as huge, bluish-white blurs dancing in the far distance…but for all intents and purposes, the one they were traveling over might as well have been a lone asteroid in the depths of space.

That was when the Dispirations showed up again. They had to be Dispirations, because such things were _never_ part of the ride. A whining buzz gradually intruded on the magnificent near-silence of the miniature world, growing louder, until a number of decidedly odd-looking machines zipped alongside the Atommobile from behind. They seemed to be part metal and part plastic, and comprised almost entirely of multi-jointed mechanical arms of various shapes and sizes. At first they were about the size of pet rabbits, relative to Minnie and Daisy, but it quickly became evident that they were not shrinking along with the Atommobile. They were closer to collie-sized when a squadron of three dove at the vehicle, tentacular limbs posed to attack.

"What are they?" Minnie squealed, clutching the Serpent Crown closer to her body to protect it.

Daisy brought her bat into play again, fending the things off with three loose-shouldered swings. "I think they're whatchamacallits," she said. "Nano-something. Nano-machines. Nanites!"

"Don't those try to _take things apart_?"

"I'm pretty sure that's the idea," Daisy said grimly. The nanites were like panthers compared to them now, and well on their way to horses. "We'll just have to avoid them until we're too small to be worth bothering with. Steer, would you?"

Minnie tucked the crown down by her feet, gripped the bar on the front of the Atommobile, and began leaning hard from side to side, causing the vehicle to swerve back and forth. The Dispirations had become elephantine in comparison, and correspondingly clumsy, but avoiding the hooks and claws at the ends of their python-like appendages was no picnic.

"This is worse than the submarine!" Minnie declared, ducking as a pair of pincers swiped at her head, scraping out a few tufts of fur.

"It's also worse than the Monorail!" Daisy said as she bashed a tentacle against the side of the Atommobile.

"Hold on tight!" said Minnie, leaning sharply forward so that the vehicle dove into a trench that had opened up in the surface of the snowflake. In reality it must have been an infinitesimal groove, but from their perspective it was practically a canyon. The nanites were too large and awkward to follow, although a few of their snapping limbs made a last-ditch attempt.

Daisy slumped back in the seat. "Nice driving," she said.

"Nice swinging," Minnie offered back. "Now what?"

"I guess we ride it out," said Daisy. "I think the Dispirations will have to get their own Atommobile if they want to follow us any farther."

They hugged the trench wall, watching the opposite one drift away and the bottom drop as they continued to shrink. If they hadn't known the whole structure was part of a snowflake, they would have sworn it was too straight and smooth to be natural. Eventually, the texture of the ice roughened. Strangely angular pores became visible, revealing the whole thing to be not a solid surface but a three-dimensional honeycomb lattice. Smaller yet, and the lattice proved to be composed of fuzzy, quivering globules—water molecules—arrayed in geometrically perfect order as far as the eye could see. The Atommobile made a banked turn into the endless network of molecules.

"How can we see all this?" wondered Minnie. "We're _way_ smaller than a wave of light by now."

"Well, it wouldn't have been a very interesting ride if the lights had been off for most of it," said Daisy. "Don't you think they look like your boyfriend? I've always thought so."

Minnie thought they looked more like motorcycle stunt cages at this point, with little lights zipping along the wire mesh. Actually, of course, the lights were electrons, and they were about to become a major concern as the Atommobile plunged toward the wall of an enormous oxygen atom. (That made Minnie wonder how, on top of everything else, they were _breathing_, but she decided not to think about it.) In the next instant, the vehicle was passing through the shell, and the world was a hurricane of negatively charged particles whipping past at impossible speeds. Even though they knew it was coming and were (reasonably) certain they wouldn't be harmed, it was pretty alarming.

But they didn't actually scream until they were through the barrage and inside the atom, with the electrons whirling overhead like stars in the heavens and the glowing nucleus pulsing off to one side…and suddenly the ride voice-over cut back in, with the typically melodramatic narrator rhapsodizing loudly, and right in their ears via the speakers, about the magnificence of the sight. As soon as they realized the truth of the situation, they laughed and exchanged a high-five. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the ride to end, peeking cautiously out into Tomorrowland to make sure no Dispirations were waiting for them, and finally hustling toward the Plaza Hub before any decided to show up after all.

"You know who rules?" said Daisy as they stepped outside, where the sun was just beginning to burn through the cloud cover. "We do, that's who! If you're looking for a damsel in distress, you might as well just move on, because you won't find one here!"

Minnie threw her free arm (the other was holding the Serpent Crown) around Daisy in a spirit of sorority. "Let's go figure out what to do about our _dudes_ in distress," she said.

* * *

The Fantasyland courtyard was the emptiest they'd seen it since the adventure began. With most of the combat-ready characters out in various parts of the park, and most of the others taking shelter in "it's a small world," only a skeleton crew, as it were, had stayed on hand to make sure the courtyard defenses stayed secure. The three Good Fairies hovered overhead, watching for signals from other flyers in other areas, while at ground level, Uncle Scrooge and Lady Kluck were engaged in animated conversation. About what, Minnie and Daisy couldn't tell, because only about 40 percent of it was in intelligible English, with the rest being a mixture of broadly accented English and Scots Gaelic. They didn't even notice the two women approaching.

Minnie cleared her throat politely, to absolutely no effect.

"_Hey, Uncle Scrooge!_" Daisy hollered. That did it.

"Ah, well, hello there, lassie!" he said. "How's the, er, quest going?"

"Well, there's good news and bad news," said Daisy. "The good news is—"

"—we've got the next crown," said Minnie, holding it out for Scrooge and Kluck to see. "The bad news is that the guys are stuck in the jungle, probably surrounded by Dispirations, and as soon as we place this thing, they'll probably wind up trapped in the Temple of Mara."

"So the question is," Daisy cut back in, "should we place it now, or try to rescue the guys first?"

"Place it now," said Lady Kluck without an instant's hesitation. "Every second you wait to do that is another second our friends spend in that ghastly gray place. That's worse than anything your lads might face from heathen temples _or_ shapeshifting monsters. You know this to be true."

"Oh…" Minnie said, downcast. "I didn't think about that."

"Buck up, girl," said Scrooge, gently tapping her shoulder with his cane. "The lads themselves will probably be better off this way. Think about it: some of the folks we're about to get back were made for adventure. You'll have all the help you could possibly hope for in mounting a rescue mission."

"Eh? Eh?" Daisy cajoled, giving her best friend meaningful elbow-nudges.

"Daisy, I _get_ it," said Minnie, pushing the other away with a hint of irritation. "It's not like I'm going to welch on our agreement. Thanks for the advice, both of you. Come on, Daisy." She set off at a brisk, purposeful walk toward the entrance to Sleeping Beauty Castle. Daisy had to trot to keep up.

"Shouldn't we call everyone back to the Hub for this?" she asked as they started climbing stairs.

"No, it would take too long," was the terse reply.

When they burst out onto the parapet, Minnie looked around frantically for a moment, trying to remember which was the right turret. Daisy pointed her to it—a broad, solid-looking one somewhat off-center from the central mass of the Castle. Minnie held up the Serpent Crown, took a deep breath, and tossed it…and like the others before it, it traced a smooth arc in the air and landed square on the spire. If it had been a carnival game, Minnie would have won the giant stuffed bunny.

She and Daisy grabbed at each other for balance as Disneyland, once again, rocketed forward through time. A burst of synth-enhanced pop music heralded the arrival of _Captain EO_ in the southern tip of Tomorrowland, not visible from their angle but certainly audible. It was followed almost immediately by a heavy brass fanfare as Adventure Thru Inner Space trembled, turned itself inside-out one wall section at a time, and became Star Tours—the park's first foray into licensing a non-Disney franchise and dressing it up with Disney magic.

The next transformation site was at the diametrically opposite end of the park, the entrance to Bear Country. The entire landscape dipped and swelled around the rocky hill that was rising out of the ground, sprouting fountains of water from its slopes and a jagged tree stump from its summit. When it had reached its full height, huge-thorned briars grew in sinister-looking tangles at its base. It was Splash Mountain, and a wooden sign nearby indicated that the area which it towered over was no longer Bear Country, but Critter Country.

The activity moved to the southern tip of Tom Sawyer Island, where an old-fashioned cider mill sprang up from the rocks, to serve as the backdrop for a show so spectacular and innovative that a new word had to be coined to describe it: Fantasmic! Minnie frowned, remembering how Maleficent had taunted Mickey with the script for the show before casting her spell. _Mickey…_ She found herself silently willing the transformation to hurry up even as it entered the home stretch. A saddle of land at the northern border of the park sank under the railroad tracks, forming a tunnel into Toontown so that human guests could finally hobnob with the Toons. And finally, the moment Minnie had been anticipating with no small amount of dread: the emergence of the Temple of Mara from the jungles of Adventureland. She tried to watch for it, but from her vantage point there were too many trees and buildings, so that all she could see was a glimpse of tan stonework and a puff of smoke that dissipated as the metamorphosis wound down.

"Whew!" said Daisy. "That was even better than the last one! It's too bad we can't make a ride out of it, huh?" She moved to the parapet railing and peeked down at the Castle drawbridge area. "I take it back—it's a good thing we _didn't_ call everyone back. I don't think there'd be room for them all."

Minnie didn't have to look to know what she meant. The decade they had just restored had been a very productive one for the Animation Department, with the release of not only several highly acclaimed feature films, but a handful of popular television series as well. And all the characters that had thereby been added to the Disney Family were beginning to celebrate their liberation from Inpotentia with a tumultuous blend of voices. There was also a certain amount of splashing—that would be Ariel and her fellow aquatics in the Castle moat.

Minnie suddenly felt a bit weak-kneed at the thought of facing them all. She had been so fixated on the idea of rescuing Mickey (and the others) that she hadn't given a single thought as to how she was going to fill his big yellow shoes in the explanation, pep talk, and leadership department.

"Minnie? You okay?"

"What am I going to say to them all? They'll be expecting Mickey…"

"You'll think of something," Daisy said. "Or I could do it!"

"No, that's okay!" Minnie said hastily. "Well, let's get this over with." And with that, she trudged back inside the Castle and started down the stairs, steeling herself for the role of a lifetime.

* * *

As soon as the world stopped spinning, Mickey carefully raised himself to his hands and knees. After a trip like that, he half-expected to find himself in the Land of Oz. But the smell of damp stone with a hint of sulfur and bat guano, and—once the ringing in his ears settled down—the distant sound of slow drumbeats, told him that he was pretty much where he had expected to end up, sooner or later: the Temple of the Forbidden Eye.

Pluto was nosing his face and whimpering. "It's okay, pal," Mickey said, rolling over onto one hip so that he could scratch the dog's ears. "I'm all right. But that was some ride, huh? Wasn't it, fellas?"

There was no reply. Not even a groan.

"Uh, fellas…?" said Mickey, actually looking around for the first time.

He and Pluto were in a forgotten, half-ruined side corridor of the temple, illuminated only by dim ambient light filtering in from elsewhere. Mickey didn't recognize it. Little heaps of rubble, some of it containing what looked uncomfortably like human bones, were scattered about the small space. Of Donald and Goofy there was absolutely no sign.

"N-now, just take it easy, Pluto," he said, pulling his loyal pet closer. But really he was talking to himself.

To Be Continued…

* * *

_A/N: Because of the content of this chapter, I hereby offer this Public Service Announcement: Kids, do not **ever** try to escape your lap restraint on a roller coaster. **Ever!** You adults probably shouldn't do it either. In fact, on any amusement park ride, just stay seated and keep all your body parts within the confines of the ride vehicle, like they tell you to._

_Anyhoo, this was a fun chapter to write. I enjoyed developing the dynamic between Minnie and Daisy. The way I see it, Minnie is the smarter of the two, especially when it comes to advance planning, but Daisy has more pluck when the heat is on. It feels awkward to refer to the two of them as "women" in the narrative, inasmuch as they are not human, but I couldn't think of anything better. "Girls" is unpleasantly condescending (the chapter title notwithstanding) and "ladies" feels forced._

_And now it's confession time: I have no excuse for the Adventure Thru Inner Space segment other than pure nostalgic self-indulgence. Most of you are probably too young to remember that ride, which closed in 1985, but it was one of my favorites when I was little. I'm pretty sure it taught me the word "electrons." I wanted to give it a piece of the spotlight while I still had the chance. You can find out more about it by visiting atommobiles dot com. (The truly obsessive among you may have spotted a couple of tributes to Star Tours—the ride that replaced ATIS in 1987—in the sequence. Just my take on an Imagineering tradition.)_

_On a completely different note, I was thinking about the Dispirations the other day, and it occurred to me that while they are immediately reminiscent of the Heartless from Kingdom Hearts, they also have certain things in common with the "small gods" from the Discworld novel of the same name. For those who have never read it, the small gods are invisible entities that dwell in the desert, far from human habitation. They were all once mighty deities with thousands of worshippers, but the civilizations that worshipped them are long gone, and without anyone to pray to them, they have dwindled down to nearly nothing. They are pretty well insane with their craving to have worshippers again and will do anything within their almost nonexistent power to get a mortal's attention. I just thought that was an interesting parallel, since I have acknowledged in the past that Terry Pratchett is one of my writing influences (in fact, some of his style crept into this chapter)._

_—Karalora_


	27. Chapter 27

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 27: Move Correctly, Do Not Die

It had been a good game. But it couldn't last forever. There was too much else that it was possible to do, and to her childlike logic that meant she was obligated to try them all. She nodded a farewell to her new friends, flew down from the trackway, and began exploring. Her instincts told her to be stealthy, lest her erstwhile captors find her and take her back to that musty place where there was nothing for her to do once she had looked at all the shiny things and smelled all the books. So she did her best to stay under and behind things, and to keep to the edges of open spaces and take advantage of any low-growing foliage she encountered.

It suddenly occurred to her, as she crouched behind an excitingly smelly metal canister and waited for the man with the long metal stick to pass by, that she was on an adventure. The thought made her almost giddy with delight, and she stifled a yip of happy surprise that would have given away her position. But then she paused to think about the new realization. (An amazing process, thinking—taking things she was currently perceiving, and things she remembered, and shaking them about until they turned into something completely new in her mind.) If she was on an adventure, did that make her a hero? And if she was a hero, shouldn't she do something about it? Like find some villains to fight? If so, how would she know what to look for?

She decided to do what had worked well for her so far, and let her surroundings inform her. And they did.

* * *

The scene on the drawbridge was so chaotic that Minnie finally had to take a page from the Book of Daisy and holler at everyone to be QUIET. It worked, if only because they were all so shocked to hear a noise like that coming out of the usually demure mouse. She suddenly found that all eyes were on her. And there were an awful lot of them.

"Um…" she stammered. "Um…" Beside and slightly behind her, Daisy smacked her own forehead.

Something small and brassy hopped to the front of the gathering. "_Pardonnez-moi_, Mademoiselle Minnie," said Lumière the candelabra, "but where is Mickey Mouse? We all expected it would be he who rescued us."

Suddenly it all snapped into place. Minnie straightened up. "He's not here," she said. "We're almost certain he got trapped in the Temple of Mara when Daisy and I moved time forward just now. Pluto, Donald, and Goofy are in there too. And before we do much of _anything _else, we're going to go in there and get them. But we'll need help." Her gaze swept across the gathering and she began naming recruits. "Aladdin…Jack Skellington…Timon and Pumbaa…are you up for it?"

"You bet!" said Aladdin. "I've never said no to an adventure before, and I'm not about to start now!"

"Sounds delightful!" said Jack. "I've never been to the Temple of Mara before, but I hear it's my kind of place!"

"Sure thing!" said Timon from his perch atop his warthog pal. "We're _starving_!"

"Perfect," said Minnie. "As for the rest of you, if you don't know how to fight or are under, say, sixteen years old—"

"Or the equivalent for your species," Daisy put in.

"Right, or that—if you're in one of those categories, head up to 'it's a small world' and stay put inside the show building. But if you're an adult and can handle yourself in a fight, we need you patrolling the park. Find someone who's already doing it and they'll explain why. Everybody got that?"

They largely didn't, but Minnie's tone had made it clear that she wasn't sticking around to answer questions. Fortunately, the few characters who had stayed behind in the Castle courtyard were coming out to take the reins. The Good Fairies took charge of the noncombatants and began herding them into Fantasyland, while Scrooge and Lady Kluck started talking up the fighters and explaining the patrol system. Within a few minutes, Minnie, Daisy, and their designated team were the only ones left in front of the Castle.

Plus one.

"Well, go on," said Minnie to the straggler.

"No. I'm going with you," said Max Goof, doing his best to puff out his skinny adolescent chest.

Minnie was afraid of this. "Nothing doing, young man. You're staying at Small World with the other kids."

"My _dad's_ in there," Max insisted. "I wanna help."

Minnie threw a pleading look to Daisy, who merely shrugged. "I don't know…" the mouse stalled.

"Aw, let him come," said Aladdin. "So he's a little young. I was half his age when I snuck into the guard outpost and stole…well, maybe we can save that story for later. My point is, everyone has to start somewhere."

"Well said!" Jack agreed with an expansive gesture.

"Okay, fine," said Minnie, "but I'm only saying yes because I'm in too much of a hurry to argue with you."

"_Yes!_" said Max, punching the air. "I mean…thanks, Minnie. This means a lot."

"Stick close with the rest of us and don't do anything stupid," said Daisy. "I don't want to have to tell your father that the first thing we did as soon as you got back was to endanger your life. Got it?"

"Yes'm," Max said obediently.

"Can we get a move on here?" said Timon. "I thought you said you were in a hurry."

"I did," said Minnie. "Let's go."

"And maybe on the way," Jack put in as they set out toward Adventureland, "you could explain exactly what's going on."

* * *

It wasn't not knowing _where_ Donald and Goofy were that had Mickey worried—Pluto was already taking care of that, sniffing constantly in an effort to locate their trail. It was not knowing _how_ they were that was the problem. It was not knowing whether they had met up with one of the temple's many horrors, or how they were faring against it if they had.

He had only tried calling their names once. The reverberation of the noise had been quite startling, and he realized that he was likely to attract entirely the wrong sort of attention if he did it again. So he left it up to Pluto to do what he did third-best (right after barking and making a mess of the house).

By and by, the dog picked up a trace of scent, and with a joyful bark, began pulling Mickey through the musty corridors, past rat-infested refuse heaps and glowing braziers, until they crashed into something that toppled over with a familiar yelp.

"Goofy?" Mickey said while he recovered his bearings. "Is that you?"

"_Mickey!_" was the overjoyed reply, accompanied by a suffocating hug. "Boy, am I glad to see you! And you too, Pluto!"

"I'm glad to see you too, Goofy," said Mickey. "Now we just have to find Donald, and then—"

"Uh, about Donald…" Goofy interrupted. "You'd better come and see."

"You found him already? Is he all right?"

"I think so, but…well, it's a bit of a sitchee-ation."

Mickey and Pluto followed Goofy to where Donald was. The lower half of him anyway, webbed feet kicking wildly. He was stuck in a wall, struggling and screaming more unintelligibly than usual.

"How did this happen?" asked Mickey.

"Beats me. I found him like this. I tried pulling him out, but he's really stuck hard!"

"Well, maybe it just needs one more pair of hands," Mickey suggested. "Donald, if you can understand me, we're going to try to get you out of there!" Then he took hold of one foot, Goofy took hold of the other, and the two of them yanked…to no avail. They tried again, bracing their feet, and about an inch of Donald's midsection came free, but no more. Then Pluto joined in, seizing Donald's tail feathers in his teeth, the three of them hauled together, and with a sound like a champagne bottle being opened, the duck burst out of the wall. All four characters landed in a tangle on the opposite side of the corridor.

Gasping and coughing, Donald spit out a fair quantity of rock dust, plus one or two small cockroaches. "Thanks, fellas," he wheezed.

"Any time," said Mickey. After a pause, he continued. "So…how'd you manage this one?"

Donald scowled. "It wasn't _my_ fault. The temple started coming up, and the next thing I knew, I was beak-first in the wall!"

"I guess it doesn't matter," said Mickey. "Now that we're all together, we can work on finding our way out of this place."

"That shouldn't be too hard," said Goofy. "We've all been on the ride lotsa times."

"Not like _this_," Donald muttered.

"Donald's right," said Mickey. "We need to be prepared for anything."

"Well, _gawrsh_," said Goofy. "How'll we ever find our way out if everything's changed?"

"I don't think _everything_ will have changed," Mickey replied. "So far, when the rides have turned real, they've still followed basically the same layout, right? So if we can get to something we recognize as being part of the track, at least it'll be something to go on. We just have to hope we don't run into…well, you know. Pretty much anything."

The other three shuddered in agreement.

"Okay then! Let's get to it!" They set off through the gloom.

Their path didn't stay gloomy for long, however. After about ten minutes of trekking through the winding corridors, the air began to feel warm, and the sulfur smell became stronger. Then the tunnel became suffused with a dim scarlet glow. Then they rounded a corner and walked right into a wave of heat so intense that it nearly bowled them over, while a sudden field of light seared their dark-adapted eyes. As their vision adjusted, they found themselves overlooking a lake of incandescent, bubbling lava, which comprised most of the floor of the huge cave gallery they had just entered. A forest of exotic rock formations rose around and even through the molten pool—stalagmites and arches and massive columns and sheets of stone that appeared to have been poured over the walls and other available surfaces. Across the fiery expanse, the crags were carved into the image of a mighty face, half of it only a skull, the empty eye socket spurting flame where volatile gas vented through fissures in the rock. From their point of view, the face was partially obscured by the ropes and planks of a suspension bridge that crossed the cavern perpendicular to their course, far up out of their reach. But they didn't have to see all of it to recognize it at once.

"Well," Mickey said after a moment, his voice sounding odd due to the heat-warped air, "at least we know where we are."

"I think there's a path over here," said Goofy.

They struck out to the left, following a rugged, narrow trail that skirted the lava, closely enough in places that they could feel the little puffs of vapor every time a bubble burst. The heat wafting off the molten rock was oppressive. After several dozen yards, it joined up with a broader trackway, large enough to accommodate a vehicle, that slanted up to the right along the contour of a sloping ledge cut into the cave wall, and down to the left unto the subbasements of the temple.

"It's the truck road!" Donald said. "We're as good as out of here!"

"Cool your jets, Donald," said Mickey. "We need to decide which way to go. Let's see…assuming nothing about the layout of this place has changed too much, left will take us down into the rat caves, and right will take us up into the Shrine of Skulls, and then…" He trailed off, slowly turning to meet the eyes of the others. Their horrified expressions suggested that they were envisioning the same thing he was—green scales and dripping fangs the size of butcher knives.

"So. Left?" he said.

"Left!" Donald and Goofy chorused, with Pluto adding a similarly inflected bark.

The immediate disadvantage of the way they chose was that it was dark. (Chilly too, once they left the roasting influence of the lava pit behind them.) They stumbled for a few minutes, bumping into the tunnel sides and each other, before Mickey managed to find a match in his pocket and light it with a flick of his thumb. The few seconds of light enabled them to make out the rough-hewn walls of the tunnel, threaded through with basalt veins and massive tree roots. Then the match burned down, Mickey dropped it, and they were enveloped in darkness again. They picked their way along by feel (and in Pluto's case by smell), shuffling their feet to avoid stepping on any rats that might be present…or sharp rocks, or anything else unpleasant to step on. A few chinks in the ceiling let in trickles of silvery light from an unknown source, but they were too small to provide any real illumination beyond the incongruously bright strips where they landed.

Finally, however, the group came to the end of the dark span. The tunnel ahead of them was broad, straight, and adequately lit. It was also lined on both sides with bas-relief carvings of skeletal warriors raising wicked-looking khandas and spears. Slender bamboo pipes protruded slightly from between their gaping teeth, hinting at the trap. Mickey and the others came to an abrupt halt.

"I don't like this," said Mickey. "I don't think we can outrun the darts."

"Do we really have a choice?" said Donald.

"Well," Mickey reasoned, "we could always go back the other way and try to sneak past Fluffy. In fact, even if she's awake, our odds might be better with her than with these things. At least there's only one of her. What do you guys say?"

Donald found a pebble on the ground nearby and tossed it inquisitively into the tunnel. It didn't even have time to land before a volley of poison-tipped darts whipped out of the mouths of the carved warriors and knocked it out of the air, leaving little smears of deadliness on its surface. "That's enough for me," said Donald. "Let's go back."

Once again they groped and hobbled their way through the darkness. At one point, Goofy let out a holler as a large rat skittered across his foot.

"You okay," asked Mickey.

"I think so," Goofy quavered. "Ever feel like there's somethin' _awful_ sneakin' up behind you where you can't see it, and then somethin' awful happens right in front of you? I feel like that's about to happen now, even though I know it probably isn't."

"You know what I think we could use right about now?" said Mickey in a puckish tone. He waited a beat before answering the question. "A Keyblade."

"No _kidding_," said Donald.

"You guys should be almost done filming for the sequel, right?" said Mickey.

Donald made a grunt of annoyance. "I hope so. It's already been over four hundred hours on set with that Sora twerp."

"I don't think he's a twerp," said Mickey. "He's a nice kid, just a little overwhelmed by the stardom."

"Aw, you know Donald," said Goofy. "He doesn't like anyone who gets higher billing than him. But what about you, Mickey? You said you got a bigger part this time around, but we've hardly seen you on the set."

"There have been a lot of scheduling conflicts; you know how it is. The tech guys are gonna manipulate some footage to get me in more of the scenes with you guys." By then, they had reached the lava chamber again and begun the trek along the upward slope of the truck road. They passed under the mighty suspension bridge, curved around the burning lake and gradually climbed past the half-skeletal face of the dread god Mara in the rock formations, into the adjacent chamber.

Here the walls were decorated with hundreds of human skulls in heaps and stacks. Some of them were sheared off at the top to make lamp bowls, in which twisted wicks of unidentifiable substance floated in grease that was all too identifiable. At the far side of the space, a steep slope, slick with mud, was the only alternate exit. They scaled it carefully, listening for the telltale whisper of scales gliding over stone. And they heard it…but not of a magnitude worth getting alarmed over.

The next cavern was covered with snakes. They were painted on the walls and sculpted into the pillars. Mostly, though, they were alive and wriggling—slithering over the ground, stretching to climb a heap of rubble, lying coiled in a cranny to rest. With the only illumination a dim reddish glow from the distant lava pit, the visibility was terrible, and the snakes appeared mostly as a churning impression on the surface of the cavern floor, accented here and there by rows of white or yellow bands that caught what little light there was, seeming to glow. The noise of their movements and their slow, reptilian breathing made a constant susurration.

Mickey was very very glad that he did not suffer from herpetophobia. But not as glad as he was that only the small, relatively harmless snakes seemed to be out and about. One let out a hiss when he put his foot a little too close to it, and he saw twinkling fangs, but it was content to let him go with the warning. However, something in the background was still hissing…

A few moments later, the group suddenly felt like they were being watched—no, _stalked_. Some change in the air currents alerted them to a looming presence just behind them…and they turned just as the giant green cobra, as long as a commuter bus and much more venomous, was spreading her hood and rearing back to strike.

They screamed and scattered, letting Fluffy plow nose-first into the ground where they had just been standing. She recovered quickly, shaking her huge head, and then began casting about for her prey, tasting the air with her forked tongue. The one she found first was Donald, trembling behind a half-toppled column. She pulled a coil of her body to box him in and began rearing up, fangs at the ready.

Mickey stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled piercingly. "_Hey!_" he shouted, waving his arms. "_Over here, Scaly!_" There was no reaction from Fluffy, and the mouse rather belated remembered that snakes are deaf. "Goofy, we gotta—" he said, but the dog was already picking up a chunk of shattered stone. He wound up and fast-balled it at Fluffy's head, landing a solid hit on her spread hood. She whipped away from Donald with a hiss of rage and turned her attention to the offender.

"Wuh-oh!" Goofy yelped as Fluffy began lashing toward him. He sprang up and started running, legs pumping fruitlessly in midair until he came back down and his feet found purchase on the ground. He got moving just a step ahead of the snake.

"Pluto! Sic!" Mickey commanded. The dog scrambled after Fluffy, lunged, and caught the tip of her tail between his teeth. She didn't even seem to notice, yanking him along while she pursued Goofy.

Donald emerged from his cubbyhole and joined Mickey. "If you _are_ hiding a Keyblade anywhere, now would be the perfect time to bring it out," he said.

"No such luck," said Mickey, breaking into a light jog. "Follow me."

He led Donald to a cobra statue with a severely cracked and weathered base, located within a quick dash of the chamber's exit. Fluffy was pursuing Goofy in semi-random loops around the Snake Temple, her predatory intensity incongruous with his rubbery, flailing desperation—sooner or later, they were bound to pass by the statue. Mickey put his shoulder to the flaking stone and shoved, and the carved coils shifted ever so slightly.

"Okay," he said. "This'll work. Donald, c'mere and gimme a hand." As the duck joined him in leaning against the sculpture, Mickey called out to Goofy, urging him to change course and lead Fluffy in their direction.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Donald muttered.

The sounds of the chase drew closer—whether by accident or design, Goofy was following Mickey's instructions. "Now!" said Mickey, throwing his weight against the statue. Donald did the same, and the heavy mass of stone began to tilt, slowly at first, making a loud grinding noise as it picked up speed. Finally, with a tremendous din, its base crumbled altogether and it tipped over, raising a cloud of dust that set Mickey and Donald coughing as they fell flat.

Gradually, the haze cleared, revealing Goofy tentatively prodding Fluffy's snout with his shoe. The great serpent was pinned underneath the broken statue, stunned. Pluto was just scrambling over the rubble.

"Well, whaddaya know?" said Mickey. "That worked better than I thought it would."

"Let's get out of here before she escapes," said Donald. The snake, a tough creature, was already coming back to her senses and starting to muscle her way out of the trap.

The four of them scampered out of the Snake Temple and into familiar territory. They were back in the cavern with the lava pit, this time high above it on the rickety suspension bridge. The heat rising off the molten rock was hardly any less intense for the distance, and the bridge quivered under their feet. On the bright side, they had an excellent view of the carving of Mara's face…although it was possible that this meant _it_ had an excellent view of _them_.

Behind them, Fluffy freed herself from the statue and glared after them, hissing with discontentment. But she made no move to follow them, instead slithering back into the comfortable depths of her own territory. They heaved sighs of relief and continued, through the boiling, sulfurous air.

They were so anxious to reach the cool, dark cavern at the opposite end of the bridge that they forgot what to expect. Their senses were dulled by the red-orange glare and powerful odor of the lava, and so they were well inside the cave before they started to become aware of their situation.

The darkness was literally crawling. A whisper like distant surf suffused the cavern, along with an oily, vaguely rank smell. The four characters froze, suddenly aware of where they were, and braced themselves for the sensation of hundreds of tiny, chitinous limbs crawling over their feet and up their legs. It didn't come, though the faint sound continued unabated, and Mickey struck a match again.

The bugs were there, all right: giant jungle ants, glistening black emperor scorpions, pincer-jawed beetles, sinuous centipedes, spiders of every description, and even albino cockroaches of positively Carboniferous proportions. They scuttled about the cave walls so thickly that not a trace of stone was visible, just a roiling mass of shiny arthropod bodies…leaving the floor entirely clear of them.

Before Mickey and the others had time to wonder what that might mean, the bugs noticed the light and, in the manner of their kind, were attracted to it. They poured down from the walls and across the ground like a sheet of liquid wax, closing in around the four frightened characters so quickly that escape was impossible. Mickey threw the only potential weapon he had—the lit match—but it burned out in midair, leaving them in the darkness once again, with only the increasing noise of the bugs' many feet to indicate that they were still oncoming.

Mickey hastily dug in his pocket for another match, but found only small change and lint. Something squirmed up his shoe and around his ankle, sending a shiver up his spine as though his skin was a chalkboard and someone was slowly drawing their fingernails across it. He kicked the air in order to fling it off, just as another bug landed on his head. Something about the second bug's weight and the pattern of movement made by its feet said _scorpion_, and in his fright Mickey lost his balance and fell. The swarm engulfed him.

Then there was a roar, and an explosion of light, and a jumble of voices and horrible crunching sounds, and most of the bugs skittered back off him. He was pulled to his feet.

"Quick, get in!" said a familiar voice, and someone helped him climb into some kind of vehicle, and then brushed away the remaining bugs. Nearby, more familiar voices were whooping and hollering with glee.

He took in the changed situation. He was sitting in one of the ride's modified Jeeps with seating for twelve. Minnie was at the wheel, gunning the car through the cavern in short bursts, while Daisy and Max Goof (!) helped the others climb aboard and Aladdin and Jack Skellington (!!!) defended the car from the bugs. The whooping and hollering, he saw in the glare of the headlights, came from Timon and Pumbaa, who were plowing through the horde, snacking as they went, clearing a path.

"Hey, check it out, Pumbaa! They have scorpions!" said Timon. He selected one and bit into it with a cringe of anticipation. "_Wow_, that's got a kick!" Pumbaa was sucking up trails of ants and spiders like a vacuum cleaner with tusks. Soon they had made it through the cavern, and the two animals scrambled aboard the car. The downside was that they were traveling through the temple along the normal ride route, which meant that the four rescuees found themselves back on the bridge, heading toward the Snake Temple.

"Uh, Minnie?" said Mickey, hopping a row of seats in order to take the one next to her. "We've already been this way, and Fluffy's pretty mad at us."

"Well, I'm not about to try turning around here," said Minnie as the bridge rocked and creaked under the weight of the Jeep. "Guys, did you hear that?"

"We're on it!" said Aladdin, standing cautiously at the side of the vehicle and readying a lethal-looking khopesh. Jack adopted a combat-ready crouch on the other side. Minnie hit the gas, and the car careened through the Snake Temple at speed, headlights flashing in time with the growls of the engine. Fluffy slithered out of a hole in the wall and charged the vehicle, hood already spread, but stopped at the sight of Jack Skellington with his bony fingers curled to strike, possibly mistaking him for one of the temple's rightful inhabitants. Then they were through, and the Jeep was bouncing down the muddy incline into the Shrine of Skulls. The turbulence shook Max loose from his seat, and Goofy nearly fell out himself in the effort of keeping his son onboard. Only with some very deft handling was Minnie able to keep the car on the path.

They left the Shrine of Skulls and headed down the slope parallel to the edge of the lava pit. It was definitely bubbling more ferociously than it had been earlier—the temple was waking up and taking exception to the intrusion. There was a savage roar that seemed to come from every part of the ceiling and walls, and the road trembled. A huge bubble of lava burst, sending incandescent lumps of molten rock flying narrowly over their heads.

"Minnie, get us out of here!" Daisy yelled.

"I _am_!" said Minnie as the Jeep plunged into the dark subbasement tunnels. "What do you think I'm doing? This thing only goes—"

"Watch it there!" said Jack, neatly plucking a pouncing rat out of the air. "Aw…he's a cute little fella, isn't he?"

"Are you nuts? Get that germy thing outa here!" said Max, swatting the rat out of Jack's hand. In the next moment, a dozen more rats jumped into the car from an overhanging branch, and everyone not currently occupied with driving spent a squeamish moment clearing them all out. By the time they were done, Minnie was slowing the car as it pulled up to the mouth of the poison dart corridor.

"Uh-oh," said Donald, slouching in his seat. "Remember the pebble?"

"What pebble?" said Daisy, an instant before Minnie hit the gas. The tires squealed, the vehicle jerked into motion, and then it was just a matter of speed and luck. Darts peppered the air, pinging off the sides of the vehicle and missing the passengers by millimeters. Aladdin managed to parry a few with his khopesh, while Jack used himself as a humanoid shield, since being dead already, he couldn't be harmed by them. After the longest ten seconds of their collective lives (and unlife), they made it through.

"Way to go, Minnie!" said Mickey. "Nice work on the defense too, guys."

"We're not home free yet, you know," Minnie pointed out, barely slowing at all as the tunnel curved right and slanted slightly upward. The ceiling was higher here than in the previous areas, and a pair of smooth stone ridges protruded from the walls about halfway up, like rails…which was exactly what they were.

"Oh, that is clever!" said Jack as the rails' cargo shifted out of equilibrium and began rolling down toward them. That cargo was, of course, a multi-ton stone sphere roughly ten feet across.

"Is it clever to get squashed flat as a pancake?" Max squeaked.

"If it is, then call me an idiot!" said Timon.

"Hold onto your teeth, everybody!" said Minnie, flooring the gas pedal. The engine sputtered as it tried to haul the car up the incline at top speed. There was no way they were going to make it to the top before the boulder dropped off the rails and smashed them like the bugs they had faced only moments before. Then there was a noise like a small explosion, and the engine roared, and the Jeep surged up the hill, and then down into a hidden corkscrew tunnel. The boulder dropped, missing the vehicle by less than a foot, and they all heard the thunderous crash behind them as Minnie yanked the wheel. One skidding, squealing moment later, she finally let the Jeep coast to a halt beside the foot of a vertical shaft, where the pulverized remains of the sphere were still settling and sending up puffs of dust.

Minnie set the handbrake and climbed out of the car.

"Where are you going?" said Daisy.

"I," said Minnie loftily, "am _walking_ the rest of the way."

"Sounds good to me," said Aladdin, hopping to the ground. "I'm not used to these contraptions anyway—I prefer Carpet."

"I guess we'll all walk," said Mickey. "We're past the danger now." He caught up to his girlfriend. "That was amazing, Minnie! Where did you learn to drive like that?"

Minnie looked at him as though he had grown a second head. "Mickey, I live in _Southern California_. The Temple of Mara has got _nothin'_ on the Hollywood Freeway."

* * *

The image in the bubble constantly wavered and distorted with the motion of the water, which didn't help matters.

"This is pointless," Captain Hook growled. "We're never going to find out anything this way. We need a view of the _land_."

Ursula rolled over and gave him a withering glance. "What I need," she said, "is some _quiet_. It's not easy to perform this kind of spell without my cauldron, you know."

"What are they doing, anyway?" asked Madam Mim, squeezing to the front of the group of Villains gathered around Ursula's luxury aquarium tank to watch her far-seeing spell. "It's gone all murky."

"They're finding a good vantage point," Ursula explained. "The moat was a miss; I admit it…but it connects to almost every other body of water in the park. They just have to find a spot where they can see without being seen _and_ that has a view of the Castle."

"Can't you give them any instructions?" asked Scar between licks of his paw. He and Shere Khan had re-settled their mutual pecking order…for the time being.

"Sorry, furball, the communication is one-way only."

The bubble brightened. A new image resolved: a panoramic view of the Plaza Hub, with Sleeping Beauty Castle to the left side and the Tomorrowland entrance straight ahead. The view was from a very low angle, maybe even slightly below ground level, but all the structures were clearly recognizable.

"Ah! Perfect!" said Ursula.

"Huh," Mim mused. "Where are they?"

"There was a lot of crowding as the Villains pressed forward, squinting at the bubble as though it would suddenly develop an inset map with a little circle labeled YOU ARE HERE.

Cruella turned to one side and started tracing lines and circles in the air with her cigarette smoke. "Oh, I see! It's the pond at the Frontierland gate!"

"So now what?" asked Scar, deliberately falling over onto his side with a muted _whump_.

"Now we wait," said Ursula. "As soon as Mickey Mouse gets back to the Castle from wherever he's been, we'll know. Then we can make our move."

"Far be it from me to criticize a colleague," Captain Hook lied, examining the shine on his hook with a detached air, "but why wait? Wouldn't it make more sense to strike while the mouse is away…so to speak?"

"Not," the Sea Witch said abruptly, "if we want all the fishes in the net at the same time."

Wicked laughter ensued.

To Be Continued…

* * *

___A/N: Argh, sorry about the delay. It's been pretty crazy lately. I hope it was worth the wait!_

_On the other hand, I make no apology whatsoever for the_ Kingdom Hearts_ reference. I've been wanting to do that for a while, to add some flavor to the characters' "actor" personas, and I figured this was a good occasion for it._

_In case you're wondering, the snake on the Indy ride really is called Fluffy. It's probably actually supposed to be male, but I thought it would be funnier if Mickey and the gang knew it as a female. I don't know whether the adjacent part of the ride is really called the Shrine of Skulls, but it seems like it would be, doesn't it?_

_It occurs to me that I'm having Minnie do a lot of crazy driving. First the Monorail, then the Atommobile, and now the Jeep. Well, why not? Everyone needs a niche._

_—Karalora_


	28. Chapter 28

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 28: Ambush on the Promenade

The mouse's obnoxious beaming face came into plain view, and the far-seeing orb shattered. A screech of rage rang throughout the chamber.

"_Failed AGAIN!_" Maleficent howled. "What does it _take_ to be _rid_ of him?" The green-tinted torches flared, reacting to her fury.

On some level she was aware that she had gone slightly mad, but it was a trivial concern. Anyway, it was only due to the Dispirations having used her mind to become. No wonder so many great artists and musicians and inventors were insane—they spent their _lives_ doing what she had been doing for only a few days, allowing a stream of ideas ranging from the offbeat to the downright disturbing to march across their brains and take form at their fingertips.

Madness…Dispiration-induced madness… Maleficent began to get an idea. She chuckled. An idea…if she forgot about it, just like that, it would turn into a Dispiration, wouldn't it? So what would happen if she then let it, her own idea, touch her mind the way the others had? She chuckled again, then realized that she was getting distracted.

"It's not working, is it? Trying to kill him," she said aloud. Diabolo looked up from preening under his wing, supposing that she was talking to him. But she hadn't said "my pet," and she was in fact gazing into space with a glazed expression. He shifted nervously from foot to foot.

"But," Maleficent continued, pacing about the chamber, "there is more than one way to destroy someone. And some of them are _so_ much more satisfying than mere slaughter. What if instead, I were to strand him in Inpotentia? Separated from everyone and everything he cares about and left to flounder in the void for all eternity with only the dregs of humanity's creative nature to keep him company…I should think even his spirit would break beyond repair. Wouldn't you agree?"

Diabolo made a caw of assent, just in case she was talking to him after all. But she seemed not to even hear him.

Her expression darkened. "Of course, I would have to wear him down first. If I left him in possession of all his strength, he would surely find a way to escape in due time. And in order to weaken him, I would first have to get him to Inpotentia, and attack him there. On this side of the divide, his options and resources are too many. The best way to achieve that, I think, is to somehow lure him there." She paused for a moment, letting all the deliciously wicked ideas sluice through her consciousness. "I simply need to select, as it were, the correct cheese with which to bait my mousetrap."

At that moment, there was a soft sound as Si and Am slunk into the room, rubbing against the stone walls as if they owned them (which, being cats, they probably assumed they did).

"Oh. It's you," Maleficent sniffed, all of a sudden completely lucid again. "I must say, I am dreadfully disappointed with the performance of your plan. I had understood you to be _professionals_."

"Cat cannot be successful _all_ times," one of them replied sibilantly.

"Yes," agreed the other. "There being no mice left if we did."

"Spare me your excuses," said the Wicked Fairy, settling onto her throne. "I have no further need of your services. Remove yourselves from my presence immediately."

Instead of obeying, the two cats sat side-by-side in front of Maleficent and grinned at her with their gappy teeth.

"NOW!!" Maleficent bellowed, half-rising and waving her staff forward so that it spat lightning Si and Am. They yowled in fright and fled, bristling like a pair of matching bottlebrushes.

When they had gotten a safe distance away, they stopped in the corridor to catch their breath and groom their fur down flat. They didn't exchange a word, because they didn't need to—they could practically read each other's minds. A few glances were enough to convey whatever they wanted. Once they had calmed down sufficiently, they sauntered off, swaying in lockstep, to see what the other Villains had been up to since they had been away.

When they got back to the meeting hall, what they found surprised them quite a lot—so much that they blinked. In tandem, of course.

* * *

The trek back to the Plaza Hub was made in an attitude of subdued high spirits. Timon and Pumbaa strolled along in silence, with the lazy satisfaction of well-fed animals. Jack Skellington was chipper, softly whistling a tune that the others almost recognized (it was a minor-keyed adaptation of "The Raiders March.") Goofy hadn't stopped hugging Max since they all got out of the Jeep. And although the boy was beginning to be annoyed by the effulgent affection—in no small part because the both of them were clumsy enough without trying to walk while joined at the hip—he was too happy to be reunited with his dad to raise a fuss.

The others talked about the quest, which was nearly complete.

"Just one more crown to go," said Minnie. "And I've got a feeling it won't be too hard to find."

"Maybe so, but—" Mickey began.

"How do you figure, Minnie?" Daisy interrupted.

"Well, so far, each one has turned up in one of the original five lands—the one that best matches its design, in fact. And the only crown we haven't found yet goes perfectly with the only land where we haven't found one."

"That's right, " said Mickey, "and—"

"The Pixie Crown!" said Donald. "It's gotta be in Fantasyland!"

"_Can I get a word in edgewise here?_" said Mickey. The others were startled into silence, and Mickey grinned sheepishly and cleared his throat. "Uh, anyway, as I was saying, I know we're in the home stretch here, but…I think we should call it a day. It's getting to be afternoon, I'm beat, I'm sure most of you are too, and the last thing we need is to trip just before the finish line because we're too tired to stay on our feet." What he didn't mention, intending to save it for when they had all had a bit of a rest, was his suspicion—his near-certainty—that Maleficent would spring something particularly nasty on them all at the last possible instant before they claimed victory, and that they would be better off facing such a thing by full daylight.

"That's the best idea I've heard all day," Daisy opined.

"Same here," said Minnie.

"And here!" Donald agreed/

"And he—waaaahhoohoohoohoooooo!" Goofy added, because he had tried to raise his hand without letting go of Max, which obviously didn't work and sent the both of them tumbling head over heels. Aladdin paused to help them up.

"Well, I for one feel quite energetic!" said Jack.

"That's swell," said Mickey. "We'll put on you on night patrol." There was a round of subdued laughter—they _were_ tired.

As they passed under the bamboo arch of the Adventureland gate, there was a movement to their left, on the murky waters of the small pond between the Adventureland and Frontierland entry paths. "Uh-oh," Donald muttered, pointing. The creature floating on the water looked like a dark-feathered duck or maybe a grebe, but if so it was no species that had ever resided in the park. Besides, the water birds were still missing, like the Cast Members (apart from Joe). Sure enough, it sensed their approach and scurried to the bank of the pond with a sinuous quality of motion that the Sensational Six had come to find characteristic of the Dispirations. Once on land, it darted into a low shrub, transforming as it went, although it was lost to sight before the new form became apparent.

"Let's keep going," said Mickey. "I don't think that one's going to give us any trouble."

"What was that thing?" asked Max as they all continued across the Plaza Hub.

"That was a Dispiration," said Minnie. She had of course filled the newcomers in on the way to the temple.

"It didn't attack us," Max observed.

"They generally attack in hordes. That one seemed to be alone," said Daisy.

"It's hard to imagine even twenty of those things being dangerous," Aladdin scoffed. "It was _tiny_."

"Yeah, a big guy like you _would_ say something like that," said Timon, an animal significantly smaller than almost any species of waterfowl.

"I'm just trying to remember when we were ever attacked by Dispirations that small and there were only twenty of them," Daisy said.

"I see your point," said Aladdin. By that time, they had reached the Castle drawbridge, and some of the characters patrolling Main Street had spotted them and begun to gravitate toward them like iron filings following a magnet. That, in turn, drew the attention of the characters in and around the Fantasyland courtyard. But there were still plenty missing—the patrol groups spread far and wide across the park, not the mention all the kids and others camping out in the "it's a small world" show building. None of them would have any chance of noticing the return.

Fortunately, one of those who had noticed was the Genie. He was more than happy to fly up over the Castle and turn into a shower of fireworks and confetti, followed by a flashing sign so conspicuous that if Disneyland hadn't been stuck in Inpotentia, it probably would have been legible all the way to Fullerton, directing the characters to report to Fantasyland. Within minutes, they appeared, trickling in from their various beats, converging on Sleeping Beauty Castle.

And then, Mickey led them all in the largest, but also the most low-tech, Character Parade ever to troop down the Small World Promenade. He sent Peter Pan and Tinkerbell ahead of them, to let those in the show building know they were coming. By the time they got there, there was a cheering crowd waiting for them, enhancing the parade atmosphere.

And that's why Mickey, despite being just a few steps from total exhaustion and certainly in no mood or condition for any more adventuring until he had gotten a good night's sleep, found that he felt pretty darn happy. From where he was standing, the park was nearly indistinguishable from its true state (and indeed, even with only four fingers, he could count on one hand the major changes that had yet to be reclaimed), and the Disney Family was missing only a couple dozen members. As he took in the panorama of the gathering, he realized just how far they had come. _We're almost through this. We're going to make it!_ There were enough of them, now, to hold off any assault Maleficent and her Dispirations could muster. The rescue of the last batch was inevitable.

It was an odd sensation, to realize that _victory_ was inevitable.

"So, uh, how's it going, everyone?" he asked. Half of him felt embarrassed to have come up with such a stupid opening line, while the other half didn't care, because these were his _friends_, for crying out loud, and he didn't always need to be "on" for them. Nonetheless, some clarification was warranted. "Has there been much trouble while the guys and I have been away?"

There was a moment of uncertainty, and then a deep rumble caught Mickey's attention. He turned to see the huge shaggy form of the Beast easing his way toward the front of the crowd. He was clearing his throat to speak, hence the rumbling. "We saw some of those shapeshifting things you mentioned," he said, "but they ran away."

"Oh?" remarked Robin Hood. "The ones Little John and I came across had a go at us, but they were nothing we couldn't handle."

More patrol groups chimed in, and the reports all sounded similar: the Dispirations either fled from any confrontation, or were weak enough that the characters had defeated them easily. For some reason, they were losing their teeth.

"Hey, wait a minute," said little Simba, bounding forward to glare at Mickey with wounded feline pride. "If those things are such wimps, how come all us kids have to hide in the building?"

"Well, at the time, we thought they would be more dangerous," said Mickey.

"Trust me, the 'wimp' thing is a pretty recent development," Daisy put in.

"What does it all mean?" wondered Alice.

"It means," Mickey said, feeling a momentum of sorts building behind his word, "that we're _winning_. The end is in sight now, folks. There's only one crown left to find, and we're pretty sure it will be right…here…" He trailed off, staring over the heads of the crowd at something in the middle distance. Then he let out a joyous whoop. "_There it is!_"

The other characters followed his pointing finger to the upper reaches of the ride façade, where the golden accents and pinwheels on the pastel-colored geometry had been joined by something else golden, something that did not belong even though it fit right in at a first glance. The strong afternoon sunlight gleamed on dazzling diamonds and sapphires and on the graceful curves of Tinkerbell, whose repeated image, in mirrored pairs hovering inside heart-shaped frames, was the motif that gave the Pixie Crown its name.

The real Tinkerbell zipped over to the crown and examined it from all sides, admiring her multiple golden replicas. Like all the others, the Pixie Crown had shrunk to a proper head-size, and the bas-relief sculptures were almost the same size as Tink herself. She looked back toward the gathering and nodded vigorously. It was legit!

Mickey found that he was hyperventilating slightly. "Oh wow, oh boy, oh _wow_!" he said, the words spilling out like jellybeans from a shattered twenty-gallon jar. "There it is, it's right there and we can get it and put it back on the Castle and this will all be over! Quick! Does anyone know where I can get a crown?"

Most of the characters were stunned into silence, but there was movement in the "it's a small world" boat flume. Ariel waved. "I bet Daddy will loan you his, if it's just for a little while. Follow me!" With a flick of her tail, she dove to the bottom of the shallow canal and vanished, only to reappear several yards away in the Motorboat Lagoon.

"Stay put, everyone; I'll be right back!" Mickey crowed. He took off after Ariel as she swam around the perimeter of the lagoon where it adjoined the Small World Promenade and the walkway into Tomorrowland, dove again, and came out on the other side of the path, in the Matterhorn's splashdown pool.

"Mickey!" came a high-pitched cry from behind him, and then Minnie was at his side. "I will _not_ stay put while you go dashing off again," she said in a gently teasing tone. "You always manage to get into the worst trouble when we're separated."

"I guess I can't argue with that," he admitted. "Ariel probably wouldn't make a very attentive babysitter…uh-oh, where'd she go?"

"I think I know," said Minnie, taking Mickey by the hand and leading him around the base of the mountain. They found the little mermaid on the other side, bobbing at the foot of a thin waterfall and frowning at the modest garden area next to the Tomorrowland gate.

"Oops—I forgot what year it is," she confessed. "The entrance to Atlantica isn't over there yet. Oh, well. No big deal." She dove once again. With twin shrugs, Mickey and Minnie retraced their steps to the Promenade, where Ariel had followed the park's water circulation system to the Storybookland canal. She acknowledged Mickey and Minnie's approach with a brief wave and then ducked through the water curtain that separated the public part of the ride from the boat storage cave…and from the portal leading to the undersea kingdom of Atlantica. The merfolk had eventually gotten their own attraction when the pretty but unremarkable Alpine Gardens were re-themed into Triton Gardens, and the portal had been moved to the new location. But for now—for just a little while longer—it was still in Storybookland.

After several moments, Ariel resurfaced outside the cave, and her father King Triton surfaced alongside her, looking stern and skeptical. "Ariel tells me you wish to borrow my crown, of all things. I told her there is too great a risk that it would fall into the wrong hands, but she insisted I speak directly to you, Mickey."

"Right," said Mickey. "Uh…please? It won't be for very long. An hour, tops. Once we get the Pixie Crown onto the Castle, we'll move forward to 2005 and everything will go back to normal."

"I don't know," Triton said, probably more out of inertial stubbornness than anything else. "It's the symbol of my power and authority, and I don't like being without it."

"Your _actual_ power and authority is in the trident, and no one's asking for that," Minnie pointed out. "And anyway…this is really important! Didn't Ariel tell you why we need it?"

"Yes, I understand that, but…"

Triton trailed off, meeting his daughter's eyes with a wince of uncertainty. She tilted her head and smiled in that way that teenaged girls do, which is guaranteed to melt the heart of any remotely loving father no matter how stern or skeptical he tries to be. "_Trust_ him, Daddy. He knows what he's doing. He'd never steer us wrong."

"Oh, very well," Triton sighed. He lifted the crown off his head with a ponderous movement, as though It weighed far more than it actually did, and handed it up to Mickey.

"Gosh, thanks, Your Majesty," he said. "You won't regret this, I promise!"

Thick black tentacles, lined with violet suckers, lifted out of the water, coiling around the two merfolk. More reached shoreward, for Mickey and Minnie, who skittered back out of their reach in alarm. Behind the two captives, the head and torso of Ursula the Sea Witch emerged into the air. She lazily ran her hands through her fright-wig hair and said "Oh, I beg to differ. There's going to be plenty of regret to go around by the time we're finished with all of you."

Triton recovered quickly from the shock and jabbed at Ursula's tentacles with the trident, causing her to yell in pain and drop Ariel and himself. He pulled his daughter close and lashed at the water with his powerful tail, propelling the both of them back to the safety of Atlantica.

"Drat!" Ursula spat at their swift departure. "But no matter. _You've_ got what I'm after this time, little mouse. Triton's crown—hand it over!"

Mickey didn't even dignify her demand with a reply. He just gave her an incredulous look, gripped the crown, and fled back toward the north end of Fantasyland, trusting Minnie to follow suit (which she of course did). But even as they started running, they saw that it was in vain.

In puffs of colored smoke or spheres of crackling lighting or merely by springing out from behind the landscaping where they presumably had been hiding, the Disney Villains appeared and surrounded the characters gathered in front of "it's a small world." Their attack was devastatingly coordinated—as the various heroes and adventurers dashed forward to fend them off, the witches and sorcerers calmly sent out spells to bind them: conjured manacles or magical ropes or simple paralysis enchantments. Largely unimpeded, the brawnier Villains started going after their targets of choice, leaving the rest of the characters to scatter in useless panic and confusion. Even as Mickey and Minnie watched, Ursula reappeared ahead of them, erupting out of the boat flume in a torrent of chlorinated spray to grab at the few characters unlucky enough to be close by.

"What'll we do, Mickey?" Minnie shouted over the chaos.

"Yoo-hoo!" called a mocking voice. Madam Mim, perched atop a fearsome looking statue that was actually the Beast, frozen in place with a spell (his eyes darted about nervously even though his face was petrified mid-snarl), fluttered a hand at the two mice. With the other, she bullied frightened characters more-or-less at random, zapping them with magical sparks. "Surprised to see us? We were pretty surprised ourselves when we found out the Queen of Hearts has been shilling for _you_ all this time!" She changed positions on her living pedestal and addressed the general area. "Hey, fellas, look who decided to join the party!"

Mickey and Minnie suddenly found themselves the center of the Villains' attention.

"Say, what's that he's got?" asked Gaston, gesturing with his musket toward the crown in Mickey's hands.

"It's King Triton's crown, that's what," said Ursula. "Grab it!"

"Are you all _nuts_?" Mickey barked as the unoccupied Villains began closing in around himself and Minnie. "We need this to fix Disneyland…to fix _time_! If we just leave things the way they are…well, I don't know what exactly will happen, but it'll be real bad! And it'll hurt all of you too!"

Mickey turned to flee, and ran right into an eye-stinging cloud of Cruella De Vil's cigarette smoke. "It's like this, darling," she said over his coughs. "He who pays the piper calls the tune…and the one—or _ones_, as the case may be—who saves the fairytale kingdom generally gets to rule it afterwards."

"So you're just taking advantage of the crisis to take over the park!" Minnie accused.

"Not entirely, Miss Mouse," said Captain Hook. "There is also an element of vengeance involved; you see, we _despise_ being made fools of, and your little stunt with Her Cardiac Highness certainly qualified. So then—that crown, Mickey, if you would be so good." He gave Mickey a light, harmless jab in the arm with his rapier.

Now Mickey and Minnie were completed surrounded, with threatening weapons on every side—the aforementioned musket and rapier, at least one magic staff, and a fair assemblage of teeth and claws. _I wish I had my Hat_, Mickey thought, trying to position himself so as to protect Minnie and Triton's crown at the same time, while also searching frantically for a way to escape the tightening ring.

"Enough of this!" shouted Ursula. "Attack him!"

But before they could charge, the time reached 4:45 p.m. And the Small World Clock struck. The clamor of gears and springs shattered the tension in the air, as well as the Villains' concentration. Almost as one, they whipped around to glare at the cheery façade, now animated with spinning cogs and bouncing numerals. Mickey shouted "_Run_"—to Minnie, to the other harassed characters, maybe even to himself—and lunged for the closest break in the circle, between Jafar and a snarling Shere Khan. Thus freed, he reoriented himself and made a mad sprint for the gates of Toontown.

"Quick!" he heard Minnie say behind him. "While they're distracted—follow Mickey!"

They only had a scant few minutes, if that—the length of the clock strike sequence, which might or might not be sufficient to keep the Villains off-balance as long as it went on. Mickey reached the Toontown entrance just as the toy soldiers began their drum-and-trumpet fanfare. He ran on farther, veered right into the Downtown district, stashed the crown in the Roger Rabbit fountain, and returned to the vicinity of the gates to check on things. He had to thread his way through a torrent of incoming characters in order to do so, which was a good thing. It meant they were following Minnie's directive and getting themselves to safety.

The Villains were trying to capture more of them, but the doll parade was in full swing, emanating cuteness into the area, and every downbeat of the sprightly music made them cringe anew. Mickey took a moment to marvel at the irony—a gang of bad guys wicked enough and famous enough to haunt the nightmares of children around the world, were being held at bay by…a harmless, even saccharine tribute to children around the world.

"Never mind them!" he heard Ursula shout from somewhere in the canal. "We've got plenty of hostages. Mickey won't hold out for long knowing that we're holding his friends captive."

Mickey realized with a sinking heart that she was probably right. He didn't see any chance of freeing the prisoners for the time being, not without compromising the evacuation of the other characters. And he himself knew how tender-hearted he was. How _could _he stand firm under such circumstances?

_One thing at a time_, he decided. At this time, the one thing was ensuring the safety of whom he could. With the clock strike sequence winding down to a halt and the influx of characters into Toontown slowing to a trickle, he ran over to one of the broad iron gates and began pulling it closed. Minnie saw what he was doing and hurried over to handle the other gate. As they were moving, Donald zipped out, moved the "Mickey's Toontown is currently CLOSED" sign out to the middle of the walkway, and then zipped back in just before the gates crashed together.

Lightning-quick, Mickey snapped on a padlock, and a pearlescent shimmer spread between the bars, lingered for a moment, and faded out of visibility. Of course, only someone with no knowledge of magic whatsoever would assume that it was no longer in operation. The one condition Mickey had insisted upon when Toontown was opened to the public was that he be allowed to fortify the physical gates with a magical barrier, one that he could activate on his own terms. This was the first time he had ever needed to do so.

A handful of the Villains marched up to the closed gates, as close as they dared with the barrier up. They scowled at Mickey and the rest of the Sensational Six on the far side of the bars. Some of them glared at the sign, resembling a lamppost with a silly face, that invited them to enjoy the many Fantasyland attractions since Toontown was barred to entry. The Sensational Six glared back. Pluto growled.

"This isn't over, rodent," sneered Jafar. "You don't dare defy us while your comrades remain in our custody."

"Are you offering an exchange?" asked Mickey, more calmly than he felt. "Them for Triton's crown?"

"Let us suppose," said Shere Khan with the utmost of care, "that we are. Do you accept the terms?"

Mickey pretended to think about it for a moment. "_No_. I'm optimistic, not stupid. I know you'd betray us at the first opportunity."

"Yeah!" agreed Goofy. "Maybe even sooner!"

"You wouldn't be able to help yourselves!" said Minnie.

"So take a hike!" Daisy added.

There was a pause, during which the members of both groups bit back any number of severely un-Disney-like retorts.

"Come on, gang," Mickey said. "We've got work to do." He spun on his heel and stalked away. After a moment, the others followed with their own disdainful gestures.

The Villains remained smug. "Ursula has the right of it," said Scar. "We have all their best fighters." He looked over her shoulder, drawing their attention to where Gaston, Governor Ratcliffe, and Stromboli were shackling the captives together, chain-gang style. "The very allies they would need in order to mount a successful rescue. They'll give in."

* * *

They took stock of their losses. All the Princes except for Charming. The Beast. Aladdin and Jasmine both, and the Genie had been sealed back into his own lamp and taken as well. Uncle Scrooge. Baloo. Most of the adult dogs. The Good Fairies and the Fairy Godmother. Five out of seven Dwarfs (Dopey and Bashful were the exceptions). Robin Hood, Little John, and their hero-worshiper Skippy. Peter Pan.

Then, too, were those who had not been part of the attack, but had been swept up in the chaos after Mickey called the retreat. Dumbo. Pocahontas. Tigger. Nala (Simba was distraught). The White Rabbit.

But it was not all bleak. Scar had been wrong—not _all_ their best fighters were among the missing. Bagheera was still free, as was Jack Skellington. The Lost Boys were champing at the bit to rescue their chief. O'Malley and the other alley cats were spoiling for a fight on general principles. And although no one had seen Elliot since the skirmish, he certainly hadn't been among the prisoners, so with any luck he was somewhere around the place, merely invisible. Ariel and King Triton, of course, were either safe at home in Atlantica or somewhere in the waterways of the park. And, lest they forget, Merlin and Professor von Drake were out there as well, hot on the trail of the runaway Dispiration, Hypatia.

More to the point, plenty of those who normally were not fighters were more than ready to make an exception. And all of them were anxious to contribute in any way they could to accomplishing the two objectives in front of them: rescuing their friends, and collecting the Pixie Crown.

They held the strategy meeting in Mickey's movie barn, where there was barely enough room for everyone once they moved all the cameras and things into the house. Mickey let Basil of Baker Street take the floor, although this necessitated running back into the house for a wireless microphone so that everyone could hear the tiny mouse.

"I've made a study of the psychology of the wicked," Basil began, "and the most important thing to understand about a villain is that he—or she—can only concentrate on one thing at a time. That is all to our advantage, because we have two objectives: rescuing our friends and collecting this Pixie Crown. The key to achieving both, I think, is to _use each maneuver as a cover for the other_." He paused, letting his words sink in. "Obviously, this will require some rather intricate planning and extensive teamwork from all of us. Let us therefore begin with a brainstorming session."

And as the evening wore on, a plan began to take shape…

To Be Continued…

_

* * *

_

A/N: On May 18, 2009, while this chapter was in progress, Wayne Allwine, the voice actor responsible for performing the role of Mickey Mouse since 1977 (the year I was born) died at age 62. The news was like a slap in the face, because to me, obviously enough Allwine **was** Mickey Mouse. He gave us Mickey-as-Bob-Cratchit in Mickey's Christmas Carol, and the besieged dreamer in Fantasmic!, and the energetic, slightly neurotic emcee of the House of Mouse, and the Jedi-like King in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and the gentle closing time announcements at the theme parks. (He was also married to Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse.) And we've lost him.

_I considered working some kind of special memorial tribute into the chapter, but then I realized: this whole **story** is in many ways a celebration of the character of Mickey Mouse, and thus is already is a tribute to Allwine. His is the voice I am imagining for all the dialogue, and his characterizations are the ones informing the determined adventurer I am presenting to my readers. I can make it the best continuing tribute by making it the best story I can produce, without milking current events for melodrama._

_With that said…farewell, Mr. Allwine. The Disney Family won't be the same without you. Why? Because we like you._

_—Karalora_


	29. Chapter 29

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 29: Ascending the Perilous Peak

Somewhere in the vicinity of ten-thirty p.m., a tiny figure picked its stumbling way across the railroad bridge that ran over the Toontown entrance tunnel. Tinkerbell was so used to flying that she had grown rather clumsy on the ground, but the Villains almost certainly had someone watching the gates, who would have noticed a flying pixie. A walking pixie was hardly any less conspicuous at night, but on the advice of the Dalmatian puppies, she had coated her body in soot (nasty, greasy stuff from the old-fashioned oil lanterns in the Toontown Firehouse—she would almost rather have been caught), and her golden light was muted. As long as she didn't venture anywhere too dark, she wouldn't stand out…and as long as she didn't go too near a bright light, she wouldn't cast a noticeable shadow. She was perfectly camouflaged for her reconnaissance mission.

That was all it was for the time being: observe and report. One of the first things she observed was the group camped out in front of "it's a small world," in a location that enabled them to keep an eye on the Toontown gates and the Pixie Crown at the same time. She recognized Captain Hook instantly, and his pirate crew, including Mr. Smee, only a split second later. It took her a moment to remember that the other well-dressed, dark-haired man was Governor Ratcliffe. The whole party was bristling with weaponry: an average of two blades or guns for each member. The Villains weren't taking any chances.

She crouched low and followed the railroad tracks for perhaps twenty feet, until she was off the trestle and out of their direct line of sight. Only then did she take to the air and cross over to the Promenade. Once there, she climbed to a height of about fifteen feet, just above the area lampposts, so that anyone looking up would be dazzled by the lights and unable to spot her. At the same time, it gave her a view over the tops of most of the nearby structures, so that she could see a much wider swath of Fantasyland. She flew out over the Storybookland canals, where the sight lines were even better.

Everything seemed quiet. Tinkerbell turned carefully in the air, looking throughout the area, and saw no trace of the Villains or their captives. But they had to be around somewhere—Fantasyland was a power base the Villains had been longing to get their hands on for decades, and anyway the rest of the park was still crawling with Dispirations (although if the reports were to be believed, they were not as dangerous anymore as they had been). They must, she realized, have set up operations indoors somewhere. It would have to be someplace with plenty of room for both the Villains themselves and the characters they had captured. And there would have to be standing water, for Ursula.

The obvious suddenly occurred to her, and her eyes were drawn eastward, all the way across Fantasyland to the largest structure in the area: the towering, rugged, snow-capped Matterhorn. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made—the peak's many ice caverns were plenty large, and with their low temperatures and softly glowing ice crystals, held the sort of eerie grandeur that would be pleasing to a wicked, megalomaniacal personality. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it at the outset.

But there was only one way to be sure, and Tinkerbell hadn't been assigned a _guessing_ mission…

She didn't enter the mountain at its middle altitudes, where the largest caverns were and thus the Villains were most likely to be. That was just good sense; if she sought them out directly, there was an even chance they would spot her as well (or first!) and she would get caught herself. Instead, she aimed slightly higher, to the dwelling place of one who would know if there were any intruders in his domain whether he had actually seen them or not.

Harold the Abominable Snowman was not, by and large, a friendly monster. The word _abominable_ was in there for a reason. But if approached respectfully, that is to say with the right amount of cowering in awe of his might, he could be…reasonable. And he liked Tinkerbell, or at least was less reflexively hostile toward her than toward most, perhaps because she was too small to eat and too quick to be worth the effort of trying to smash against a frozen wall.

Shivering with both cold and trepidation, Tink fluttered into the darkness of the snowman's lair. The soot was starting to wear off in patches, and her luminous body threw blotches of dim yellowish light on the glossy ice walls. She called to Harold once—and cringed as the acoustics of the chamber magnified her bell-like voice into an echoing jangle. If the Villains were inside the mountain there was no way they would fail to hear it…but fortunately it was similar to the natural sounds often heard within the peak, when the howling alpine winds came through and vibrated the ice crystals.

And anyway, it had the desired effect. Almost at once, the gloom was lit up by a pair of glowing red eyes, and a savage growl rattled the air. Take by surprise despite herself, Tinkerbell backpedaled in mid-air until she glanced off a wall and fell to the cavern floor. There was a crunching sound, followed by a bloom of soft bluish light, and the pixie looked up to see Harold bending over her, inspecting her by the glow of a crystal he held in his paw like a candle. She stood, brushing frost from her dress, and gave him a demure wave. He grunted a noncommittal greeting and turned away to jam the crystal in a crack in the wall. Then the two got down to business.

Even though neither of them could speak in a manner comprehensible to humans, as beings of myth and legend they understood one another well enough. Harold confirmed that indeed, there were intruders present, with powerful magic, which was why he hadn't confronted them. Beyond that, he couldn't tell her anything.

She thanked him briefly and flew off to investigate, relying on her own uneven luminosity to light her way in the dark upper caverns. It was a poor way to navigate, and slow, and after a few fruitless minutes she had to alight on an ice stalagmite and vibrate her wings at top speed in order to generate a little warmth. As she was so doing (and breathing into her cupped hands and rubbing her arms), she became aware of muted voices. She glanced around and spotted a blue-green glow coming from around a bend in the tunnel, and went at once to the spot. The light was coming from a fissure in the floor. It was only an inch or so wide, and though Tink could have squeezed through it, she realized right away that there was no need. Peering through the crack, she had a perfect view of the crystal-lit chamber beneath her.

She had found the Villains' base of operations, all right—several of them were gathered around a deluxe souvenir map of Disneyland which they had spread over a sort of ice plateau rising from the floor, apparently dividing up the park amongst themselves. A few sections of the map had already been outlined in red ink and stuck with a little flag bearing someone's face or personal emblem, and the rest was currently being argued over—not loudly (loud noises inside the mountain never ended well), but with a certain droning intensity. Tink listened in anyway, hoping to gather some information from their debate, but for several minutes all she heard was carping and smugness. Then someone brought up lawyers, and she was on the verge of taking off to do more exploring when a dreadful noise broke out. It sounded like a pack of dogs howling from somewhere nearby, and she surmised that was exactly what it was. The cavern shook with the reverberation, and a few slender icicles and crystals pattered down from the ceiling.

"Confound it, Scar!" Ursula snapped from the luxury of a glacial meltwater pool as the sound died away. "Can't those mangy beasts of yours keep the prisoners _quiet_?"

"More ice broke this time," growled Gaston. "At this rate, they'll shatter the cages."

"I already told you, that's not possible," scoffed Madam Mim. "The only way to break my double-reinforced enchantments is with a big burst of magic fire from _inside_, and even if the fairies somehow got loose—which they can't—they'd have to come through here in order to get to the dungeon."

Tink decided she'd seen and heard enough. With a little exclamation of satisfaction, she took to the air again and made her way out of the mountain, streaking back through Fantasyland at high speed.

She hadn't gone entirely unnoticed, however. Her little jingle had been just loud enough to be heard, but not so loud as to be bounced around by the ice and have its direction masked. By the time Cruella DeVil reached the part of the cavern underneath her spy-fissure, thrust the end of her cigarette holder up through the crack, and swiped it back and forth, Tink was long gone. But when she brought it back down, there was something golden and glittering clinging to the tip of the cigarette, rendering the smoke shimmery and fragrant, and the whole thing felt noticeably lighter than normal.

"Well, well," she said, holding it out so that the others could see the trace of pixie dust before the cigarette's smoldering consumed it. "It seems we've had a minor infestation."

"Red tide!" Ursula swore. "Those _idiots_ guarding the gates have flubbed it!"

"Pompous blowhards are always a bad risk," Gaston opined, not even noticing the irony. "Battle stations?"

"No, not yet," said Jafar, rising from his seat in the corner of the cavern. "Obviously the goody-two-shoes are planning something. They probably think they're very clever. Why not let them believe they've succeeded at first? If they think they are winning, they will become complacent…even easier for us to defeat. And it will give us time to prepare a _special_ surprise for them. It shouldn't be too difficult here…on the top of a mountain."

With that, he indulged himself in some maniacal laughter. Most of the others present joined in—otherwise, what would be the point of being a Villain?

* * *

Six more times had the smiling clock tower performed its show since Tinkerbell's survey. It was midnight, and a thin mist was condensing out of the cooling air, giving a halo to every light source and blurring the edges of anything viewed from a distance.

Midnight. In tradition and folklore, the most powerful time for Evil.

For that very reason, the plan had drawn some protests. But as Basil pointed out, the perfect time to make their move was the moment when the Villains least expected them to. And as Jack Skellington pointed out, the Villains weren't the only ones who drew strength from the infinite blackness of the deepest part of the night, when the fog is settling on the land and the only sounds to be heard are the mournful calls of owls and wolves and the pounding of your own heart, and witches hold their eldritch rites on lonely—they finally managed to shut him up.

And as Mickey pointed out, in the summer, Disneyland was usually _open_ until midnight. The Fantasyland they were planning to take back was a shadow built from the memories of people scrambling to get in line for the last ride of the day, and then trudging back wearily through an area that was still well-lit, ringing with music, and competently overseen by Cast Members. It wouldn't be dark and eerie enough to favor the Villains until at least an hour _after_ midnight (and not at all, if there were enough Grad Nite memories influencing the place).

With nothing important happening (that they were aware of) and a cheerful little clock strike display every fifteen minutes, the guards' alertness was flagging. But rustling noises from the hedge behind the right side of the ride façade, near the parade gate snapped them to attention. Hook motioned for silence, and then for the others to follow him. They crept closer to the source of the sound, and heard faint voices—high-pitched yet rasping.

"That's not a bowhead, that's a sheepshank!"

"I followed the instructions in the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook!"

"You followed the wrong ones, then."

"Quiet, guys! They'll hear us!"

A moment later, three round, white-feathered heads popped out of the foliage, followed by the associated bodies, and Donald Duck's adventuresome nephews crawled out of the hedge via a gap so small that they probably wouldn't be able to use it if they aged another year. Huey was toting a coil of rope with a grapnel at one end, Dewey carried the aforementioned guidebook, and Louie had tucked under one arm something many-pointed that gleamed gold even in the multi-colored artificial lights of the area.

Hook stood over them menacingly, twirling his mustache with his hook and holding his rapier so that they were forced to stare up the blade. "Hello there, lads," he said in mockingly unctuous tones. The pirates closed in.

The duckling triplets didn't lose their wits for an instant. They immediately began screaming their heads off and tried to bolt, but they were too efficiently surrounded. In a matter of minutes, they had been tied up with their own rope and relieved of their other possessions, particularly the crown. While three pirates ranging in size from medium to burly held them still, and responded with smirking stoicism to their struggles, Hook draped the glittering prize over his hook and held it well up out of what would have been their reach had their hands been free.

"I'll say this," he said. "I could almost admire Mickey Mouse's brazenness, sending such tender youngsters on his all-important errand. I almost hate to disappoint him. Gents, Smee, take these charming little knee-grazers to the mountain and see that they're properly locked up. And let our colleagues know the Sea King's crown is now in our possession."

"Aye-aye, Cap'n," Smee said with a salute. "But, er, what shall I tell them you're doing in the meantime?"

"Tell them the rest of the crew and I—and our dear associate the Governor, of course—are awaiting the inevitable follow-up to this ill-fated venture. When the imps fail to return, someone's bound to investigate, and then they as well shall fall into our grasp."

"Aye-aye, Cap'n!" Smee said again. He and the assigned crew members began leading the whimpering ducklings off toward the Matterhorn.

"I say there, Hook," said Ratcliffe. "That was masterfully done just now. You are a credit to the profession of privateer."

"Yes, indeed," Hook said with excusable pride. He lowered his left arm and admired the crown dangling on his hook.

"Lovely," Ratcliffe agreed, running his fingers lightly over the buttery surface. "It's a pity we have to use it to undo Maleficent's meddling, instead of keeping it as…" He trailed off, frowning suddenly, and squinted at the metal of the crown, which had wrinkled slightly under his fingertips.

Hook noticed it too. "Odds bodkins," he exclaimed. He transferred the crown to his hand and prodded the warped spot with his hook, noting with horror that the gold lifted away. It was only foil, covering a cheap tin cartoon prop. "A ruse," he said numbly. Then, rising to a scream: "It was a bleeding _trick_! Those little brats _let_ themselves get caught!" He flung the fake crown down into the canal.

"What for, do you suppose?" asked Ratcliffe.

"Nothing good for us, I'll be bound," said Hook. He rounded on what remained of his crew. "Well? What are you waiting for, you scurvy dogs? Go after them! Stop them before those miniature menaces get inside the mountain!" The pirates sprang into action so hastily that they did a fair bit of crashing into each other and accidentally discharging their firearms before they managed to get moving in the proper direction.

"Not going with them?" asked Ratcliffe.

"Of course not, Governor. That's just what the goody-two-shoes would like, isn't it? You and I dashing off like rabbits, leaving the area unguarded…no, we're going to stay right here in case they try something else."

"You mean something like this?" said a sprightly voice above and behind. Both men whirled around and glanced up just in time to be swiftly attacked. A lithe, dark shape dropped onto Hook, knocking him off his feet and winding him, while masses of silvery strands cascaded from the spires of the clock tower, wrapping around Ratcliffe and binding him hand, foot, and mouth.

As the confusion of that initial instant passed, Hook found that he was being pinned by a snarling black panther, and Ratcliffe made a muffled noise of alarm as a very tall, _extremely_ thin figure in a pinstriped suit sprang down from the clock tower and landed before him. Its face was a bare, round skull, and its fleshless fingers gripped a large spider.

"Bravo!" Jack Skellington told Bagheera. "A most efficient takedown. Now, if you please."

Bagheera eased off the petrified pirate captain, and Jack hauled him to his feet. Then, placing one bone hand on Hook's head, he spun him around rapidly, squeezing the spider like a pastry bag so that streamers of silk squirted out. Soon Hook was as thoroughly trussed up as Ratcliffe.

"Well done," said Bagheera. "You're a strange one, all right, but very good at what you do."

"Why, thank you!" said Jack Skellington, releasing the spider with a gentle pat. "And you, sir, are as dreadful as the Black Hound and twice as silent!"

"If that's meant to be a compliment, then I accept it," said Bagheera with a chuckle. He turned about and padded down the landscaped slope of the Topiary Garden to the loading area for the ride, then made his way back to the walkways and from there to the gates of Toontown. "It's safe," he reported.

The gates were pushed open a few feet, and more characters emerged from their besiegement: Cinderella and Prince Charming, the Lost Boys, Snow White and the two uncaptured Dwarfs, Aurora (or possibly Briar Rose, since like the other Princesses she had changed into her common dress for the mission), Belle, Alice, the alley cats, and bringing up the rear, the Sensational Six. Most of them were armed—Charming with a military saber, the Dwarfs with their usual pickaxes, the Lost Boys with clubs and slingshots, and the girls with an assortment of fireplace irons, heavy cookware, sporting gear, and other implements from Minnie's house, plus an honest-to-goodness scimitar which Belle had found in the prop warehouse while picking up the decoy crown.

"This is it, folks," said Mickey. "In fifteen minutes, we're going for it, so try to get the ball rolling by then. If you have to split up, make sure there's at least three in each group, and don't confront any of the magical types directly. Good luck!"

"We won't let you down, chief!" averred Slightly, AKA Foxy, who as the tallest of the Lost Boys tended to act as their _de facto_ leader whenever Peter wasn't around.

"Come on," said Belle. "The sooner we get there, the more time we'll have to act." She went into a light jog up the Small World Promenade, and the others in the makeshift war party followed.

Mickey, meanwhile, led his five compatriots around to the right side of the "it's a small world" ride façade and gazed up at the Pixie Crown, rubbing his chin.

"I think it'll work," said Minnie. "We just need to be careful about how we stack ourselves."

Several feet away, Captain Hook mumbled something indistinct into his spider silk gag. "What's that? Got something to say?" Jack taunted, hooking a finger in the silk and shifting it so the pirate could speak.

"You just think you're so clever, don't you?" Hook said to Mickey. "Well, just you wait and see. We've still got some nasty surprises in—mmff!"

Jack let the gag slip back into place. "I think we've heard just about enough from the peanut gallery," he said.

"Villains," Donald jeered. "They're all talk."

* * *

The way to the Matterhorn was clear. Donald's nephews had waited until the second group of pirates ran up, shouting semi-incoherently, before slipping out of their trick rope and running away, leading the entire crew on a merry chase that ended with half the pirates dumped in the Submarine Lagoon, the other half in the Motorboat Lagoon, and Smee locked in a maintenance shed built into the side of the mountain. When the invasion party reached the chalet-like structure that housed the queue bullpen, they found the mischievous triplets already waiting for them, perusing the chapter on mountaineering in the reclaimed Junior Woodchuck Guidebook.

"You won't need that, you know," Cinderella informed them while passing over some spare weapons. "We're going to take the stairs next to the lift."

"It never hurts to be prepared," Dewey said virtuously.

The party approached the cave entrance at the foot of the mountain, stepping gingerly over the paired tracks as they curled together to run parallel up the chainlift inside. It was pitch-black inside, the better to set the mood for the ride, but Donald's nephews had brought chemical glowsticks with them for just that reason, and the pirates, incompetently, hadn't bothered to search their pockets. They cracked and shook them as the party entered the cave, producing red, blue, and green light to illuminate the concrete stairs next to the lift.

"Oh, dear," Alice sighed, noting how very long the climb was. But they couldn't take a bobsled without alerting the Villains to their presence, so they were stuck hiking.

They climbed steadily, the stronger characters lending a frequent hand to the weaker ones, and the climate gradually changed from the cool humidity of an Anaheim summer night to the harsh, windy chill of the upper Alps. They passed a gap in the cavern wall, where dim bluish light showed snow falling in torrents—_inside_ the mountain. Shivering with cold now as well as apprehension, they pressed on, and after a few more minutes, made it to the top of the slope.

It would have been dark here as well, without the soft radiance of the glowsticks, multiplied by bouncing off and diffusing through the icy coatings on the cavern walls.

"So what now?" asked Aurora. "Find the prisoners?"

"Remember Tinkerbell's report," said Prince Charming. "The fairies and the Genie are being held separately from each other, and the only route from one to the other is through the Villains' own quarters."

"That's what _they_ think," said Bashful, hoisting his pickaxe, and then turning bright ride and trying to hide in his beard when his outburst got everyone looking at him.

"That would certainly do the trick, but it make too much noise," said Belle. "It looks like our strategy is going to depend on which of those two rooms we can access from _here_."

"Leave that to us, sister," said O'Malley. The alley cats spread out, venturing into the various tunnels that branched off from their current location and carefully sniffing the frigid air. It was Scat Cat who caught the scent, or rather, scents—a few dozen mingled odors of people they all knew well. He made a whistling hiss through his teeth to call the rest of the group, and they set off down the corridor with more purpose. It wasn't long before they began to hear muffled conversation, and shortly after that, they rounded a bend and found light spilling into the tunnel from ahead.

Donald's nephews dropped to their hands and knees and crawled ahead to investigate. They discovered a broad but low-ceilinged chamber, faintly illuminated with glowing crystals and crowded with dome-shaped, doorless cages seemingly drawn from the ice. Each cage was occupied by one to three familiar figures, most of them huddled up in response to the cold, many of them shivering. Some of them had additionally been put in chains—ice chains. At the opposite end of the cavern was another tunnel, presumably leading to the main conference chamber where the bulk of the Villains were.

Disgusted and outraged, the boys scrambled back to the group and described what they had seen in whispering tones. "But how'll we get 'em out with no magic?" Louie concluded.

"We'll have to somehow draw the Villains out of both the prison area and their conference room," said Cinderella, "so that some of us can get through to look for the fairies and the Genie. Once we manage to free them, the rest should be smooth sailing."

"We'll need to create a disturbance in the prison," said Belle. "Something obnoxious enough to get all the Villains to come running. Then we can retreat back to the branching tunnels, break into groups, and try to separate the Villains and keep them busy long enough for one group to make their move."

"Leave the first part to us," said Huey.

"And the last part to us," offered Snow White, holding up Aurora's hand.

"Let's do it," said Charming.

The triplets crept once again to the makeshift dungeon. The prisoners closest to the entry point spotted them, but Huey instantly gestured for silence and they managed not to react. The voices they had heard earlier didn't belong to the prisoners, but to the hyenas guarding them, or at least pretending to guard them while engaging in their usual wisecracking-cum-bickering banter at the far end of the cavern. They didn't come close to noticing the three ducklings as they skirted the perimeter of the cavern until the reached the large cage housing the Beast, who had been not only chained but muzzled, and looked absolutely despondent. With his slouched bulk screening them from the view of the hyenas, the boys began hammering on the bars of the cage with a fireplace poker and a rolling pin, gently at first but with gradually increasing force.

"Hey! What's that noise?" came Banzai's voice. "You prisoners better not be tryin' to escape again!"

Louie wound back the poker as though preparing to hit a home run and struck the cage full force, ringing it like a huge cathedral bell. The sound filled the entire space, setting up sympathetic vibrations in the other cages so that within seconds, it was all one mass of droning, chiming sound.

The Tramp caught Pongo's eye, and the both of them deliberately did what comes naturally to a dog faced with that level of noised: they howled. Most of the other dogs present joined in, and the Beast, perking up, growled through his muzzle and rattled his frozen chains.

By this time, of course, the hyenas were investigating the cause of the turmoil. They trotted among the cages, barking orders at the dogs to shut up and reciting any number of threatening clichés. Finally Shenzi stuck her nose behind the Beast's cage…only to have Dewey smack it with the rolling pin. Then the boys split up and began threading their way through the dungeon, yelling at the top of their lungs and hammering on the cages some more, each with a hyena in pursuit. The dogs kept howling, and soon most of the other prisoners got the idea and added their voices to the cacophony. Icicles shattered by the dozen, pelting the scene with freezing shards. No one would have thought it could possibly get any louder, until an earsplitting report from a firearm ripped through the cavern.

Everyone fell silent. The hyenas skidded to a halt. In the mouth of the entry tunnel opposite where the triplets had come in, Gaston stood, blowing the smoke off the barrel of his musket. "What's going on in here?" he said, not very loudly but certainly menacingly, enunciating each word. Behind him stood his fellow Villains, all wearing expressions somewhere on the spectrum from annoyance to rage.

"It weren't our fault!" Shenzi protested. "Those bratty little ducks—Chewy and Stewie, or whatever their names are—they came in here and started poundin' on stuff!"

"Yeah!" Banzai agreed. "Poundin' and yellin' and gettin' everyone else to yell too! Right, Ed?"

Ed nodded frantically.

"Little ducks," Scar repeated, slinking forward.

"That's what I said!" said Shenzi.

"So where are they now?" asked Scar.

The hyenas whirled around, whipping their heads from side to side in search of the triplets, who had slipped away in the immediate aftermath of Gaston's gunshot.

"They musta done a runner out the back way!" said Banzai. "We should go after 'em!"

"It's a virtual maze in there," Cruella DeVil pointed it. "It would take all of us."

"Then that's what we do," said Scar. "We can't afford to let them run around up here. They might interrupt the spell. Come on, all of you. Including _you_ three," he said with a lethal glare at the hyenas.

"But what about the prisoners?" asked Banzai.

"They'll keep," said Scar.

On that note, the Villains trooped out of the dungeon and into the poorly lit passage beyond. There was no sign of the triplets. The Villains very quickly decided to split up and spread throughout the tangle of tunnels, cutting off every possible avenue of escape for the ducklings. Only Cruella, who least relished meeting them in a semi-dark cavern ("Shin-kickers if I ever saw any!"), stayed behind to give the alarm in case the boys somehow managed to evade everyone else and double back toward the prison.

So it was the vain furrier, distractedly smoking and suffering the discomfort of being largely motionless in a cold place (her lush mink coat was designed for style, not substance), who suddenly became aware of light footsteps pattering up the tunnel toward her. She hurriedly flicked her gold-plated cigarette lighter in order to see who it was, but succeeded only in partially blinding herself with the sudden flare of light. The next thing she knew, she was knocked flat on her back and half-winded, and as her vision returned, she found herself looking into the jug-eared, baby-toothed face of Dopey the dwarf. He blew a huge raspberry before someone with a high-pitched voice whispered "Come on!" and gently pulled him away.

"Ugh," Cruella said. It was the best she could do for an alarm until she got her breath back and her ears stopped ringing.

What she didn't realize, at least at first, was that it was the _tunnels_ that were ringing…with the sound of Villains being clobbered, or just missing being clobbered. Gaston was the first one down, after running afoul of Cinderella's frying pan in the dark. The clanging sound of the strike carried far in the acoustics of the ice caverns, and then it was more-or-less chaos as the Villains in their ones and twos ran into groups of heroes in their threes and fours. Shere Khan found that in a match between a tiger and a clowder of alley cats, the former only has an advantage when there is room enough for him to maneuver. Belle and Alice, armed with the scimitar and a nine-iron respectively, tag-teamed anyone they came across, shearing off locks of hair and smashing fingers and toes. The Lost Boys constantly met up and split off three-and-three again, changing the arrangements each time so that no Villain could ever be certain _which_ three they would meet (although the Raccoon Twins always stayed together).

The most frustrating thing of all for the Villains was that their original targets—Huey, Dewey, and Louie—were nowhere to be found. They had already exited the mountain and were hurrying back to Toontown.

The turmoil lasted several minutes before the Villains finally managed to retreat and regroup at Cruella's position. She had only just recovered enough to sit up, and it took two people telling her before she caught on that they were in fact up against over a dozen heroic characters.

"This is unbearable!" Scar growled. One eye was swelling and purpling and his mane looked like someone had taken a pair of dull hedge trimmers to it. "As much as I _loathe_ to admit this, we need backup—_magical_ backup. The spell will have to wait! Someone get up there and—"

"Calm yourself, Scar; that will not be necessary," said a new voice. The frazzled Villains looked up to see Jafar striding toward them from the direction of the dungeon, his lips pressed together in a smug smile. Ursula was with him, easily hauling herself arm-over-arm along the icy floor. So was Madam Mim, her arms piled with the Genie's lamp and four fist-sized magical baubles, each containing the shrunken, imprisoned form of one of the fairies.

"It's done, then?" said Scar.

"Oh, yes," Jafar replied, holding his cobra-headed staff out so that the rest of them could see the pale yellowish light in its eyes. "It should begin taking effect any moment now—we'd best be well away from here before then."

"And then there's this little development," said Ursula, rolling over onto her side and curling her tentacles forward. Four of them were wrapped around the weakly struggling forms of Snow White, Aurora, and the two Dwarfs.

"We found them trying to steal their magical friends back," said Mim. "We were wondering how they got past you."

"Cruella," Gaston said condescendingly, "you were supposed to _warn_ us if anyone slipped by."

"They assaulted me! It's not like the rest of you have fared any better against the others!" She addressed the three magicians, anticipating their questions. "Yes, apparently there are others in here somewhere, and they've learned to fight dirty."

"Well, we'll soon have them out where we can see them," said Ursula. She gave the two Princesses in her clutches a little squeeze, eliciting a pair of faint whimpers. "Go on, sweethearts. Call for help. It was a nice try at being brave, but we all know neither of you is the type."

"All right, that's enough," said Cinderella, stepping out of one of the side passages with her frying pan held like a weaponized baseball bat. Prince Charming was right behind her, saber at the ready, and the rest of the rescue team emerged from the other side passages. "Let them go—in fact, let _all_ our friends go—or we can have this out right here and now."

"My _goodness_," said Ursula. "Just _look_ at all the Princesses acting too big for their petticoats."

"My lovely, you are in no position whatsoever to be making demands," said Jafar. "Your doom is on its way even as we speak and every moment only brings it closer."

"We heard," said Belle. "Are you sure _you_ want to waste time fighting us? Wouldn't it be safer all around if you just gave us what we want?"

"Oh please," said Mim, momentarily shifting her grip on the imprisoned fairies and Genie so that she could make a dismissive gesture with one hand. "You're no match for us."

"We got past the pirates, didn't we?" Charming pointed out. It was a lie of omission, but he said it so sincerely, making careful eye contact with a few of the more dominant Villains, that it had the desired effect. They put two and two together.

"_The crown!_" Scar suddenly burst out, his hackles raising. "It's unguarded!"

"Blast it all, you're right!" said Ursula. "The spell will be worthless if Mickey just hits the reset button! Very well, kids, have it your way. Rescue your pathetic little friends…for all the good it will do them _or_ you." She released her captives roughly and began slithering back the way she had come. The other Villains followed suit, Mim more-or-less throwing the lamp and baubles at the good guys before she turned on her heel and jogged away.

"We have to hurry," said Cinderella, scrambling to gather up the baubles, which bounced and rolled like giant glass marbles. "How did Tinkerbell say to open the cages?"

"Magic fire from inside," said Belle. "Best if we have all of them." She caught up with the Genie's lamp, seized it, and rubbed it.

After that, things were fairly simple. The Genie dissolved the baubles and freed the four fairies, and all five of them headed straight for the dungeon and went over it methodically, shrinking down to enter the cages one by one and burst them. But even before they had finished, a faint rumble had begun, seemingly centered in the uppermost part of the mountain. By the time all the characters had been freed, it was noticeably stronger, though no louder. But it impressed upon all of them the urgency of escaping.

The Genie enabled that, by transforming into a sleek, multi-car bobsled, big enough for all of them to ride in. The spiraling trip down the slopes of the Matterhorn was a harrowing one, all the more so because of the flashes of movement that were visible near the mountain's peak whenever they were on an exterior section of track. All they could do was hope that, whatever was going on up there, it would indeed be brought to an end automatically when Mickey placed the Pixie Crown.

* * *

In point of fact, Mickey didn't have the crown yet. Reaching the upper portion of the "it's a small world" façade proved to be more difficult than the Sensational Six had expected. They had no climbing gear, and the façade wasn't really meant to bear extra weight anyway. So they had attempted to reach the Pixie Crown by building a not-exactly human tower out of themselves. It was precarious work, and therefore slow—Pluto formed the base, and Goofy stood on his back, followed in order by Donald, Daisy, Minnie, and finally Mickey, trying to keep hold of Triton's crown while climbing an increasingly unstable stack of his friends.

He had just made it, and was standing on Minnie's upraised hands and reaching out to touch Triton's crown to the Pixie Crown, when the Villains arrived. "Oh, no, you don't!" shouted Ursula as she surfaced in the "it's a small world" canal. Almost on instinct, she enchanted the water to be mobile and sent a wave crashing into Pluto, toppling the whole tower. "We've come too far to lose to your pathetic tricks now, mouse!"

Mickey hit the ground hard and lost his grip on Triton's crown. It rolled away, out of his reach, until Gaston stopped it with a booted foot. "And that is, as they say," he said, reaching down to pick it up, "chick mate."

"That's _checkmate_, you illiterate slob," Jafar muttered.

"No," Mickey said, dazed from the fall but rising shakily to his feet. "You can't have it. _We've_ come too far to lose to _you_!"

"Nonetheless," said Jafar, "you have lost. Behold!" He gestured with his staff toward the top of the Matterhorn, which was visibly shuddering by now, sending tremors through the ground. The snow on the peak crumbled away, leaving only a bare black mountain.

Then the blackness opened up, and became a pair of immense leathery wings. A horned head lifted, dead black against the hazy night sky, and a pair of eyes like cracks in the side of an active volcano opened.

With a sound like the brass section of an orchestra, the black god Chernabog bellowed his triumph.

To Be Continued…

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* * *

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_A/N: If you don't know already, Google "Warren Spector Epic Mickey" and prepare to see some of the most amazing, disturbing, utterly fascinating images ever drawn for the consumption of Disney fans. If this game gets made, and is anything like the concept art promises, it will make_ Kingdom Hearts_ look like_ Disney Princess Enchanted Journey_._

_Sorry this chapter took so long. I had it almost finished, and then I realized that a lot about it didn't make sense and rewrote it. Mostly this meant rearranging certain sections, and switching up which characters did certain things, so it wasn't a rewrite from scratch. It still probably tacked a few weeks onto the process. Such is the price we all pay for premium Karalora fanfiction quality. But man, was it ever fun to take the immediate focus off Mickey and crew for most of the chapter and write interaction between bunches of other characters instead. I know there are a lot of characters I left out, but trying to include them all would have been just too much._

_As one last note, those of you with deviantArt accounts may be interested a new club I've founded there, the Armchair Imagineers Club. It's a community just for fans of the Disney theme parks who like to fantasize about rides and such they would build there if they could. If you're interested, go have a look at armchair-imagineers dot deviantart dot com. Obviously, replace the word "dot" with an actual dot to get the URL.)_


	30. Chapter 30

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 30: Getting Caught Up

The Matterhorn, that famous peak in the Swiss Alps, rises 14,692 feet above sea level, the better part of three miles. Walt Disney's scale model is 147 feet high, just one percent the size of the original. That was a minor blessing, because it meant that Chernabog was also scaled down somewhat—merely enormous rather than titanic.

But his wings would still have served a ship for sails and he still could have lifted and crushed a horse in his two hands, and in any case, the core of Chernabog's threat has never been his size, but his vast and malevolent power. He is a _god_, the Black God, and all that is dread and foul dances at his command.

He swiveled atop the mountain, sweeping his gaze over Fantasyland. All the characters on the ground witnessing it averted their eyes, out of an instinctive conviction that direct eye contact with Chernabog would stop their hearts. He located the moon, hanging behind a veil of humidity in the sky over Tomorrowland, and turned his back to it so that he could look down upon his own shadow, extending toward the Fantasyland courtyard. A grin split his gargoyle-like face, visible only as knife-edges of sulfur-colored light from his eyes, reflected on his teeth.

Satisfied for the moment that the demon's attention was not on any of them, Mickey rounded on Jafar, and by extension Ursula and Mim and all the rest of the Villains. "You _maniac_!" His voice was furious, but he kept the volume low, unwilling to risk attracting Chernabog's notice. "How could you summon _him_? Do you even _know_ everything he's capable of? _No!_ You don't! No one does! That's why we keep him sealed away in the first place!"

"Well, now we have an opportunity to find out, haven't we?" Jafar said evenly.

"Mickey's right, you _are_ a maniac," said Minnie, balling her hands into fists. "Even Maleficent knows better than to summon things she doesn't fully understand."

"Really?" said Ursula from the canal. She flicked a hand, and a gentle wave rose, carrying her with it, and deposited her neatly on the ground. "You give her an awful lot of credit, considering. I hope you realize she's why we had to do this. She raised the stakes for everyone with this stunt of hers."

"Oh, I'm _sure_ that's it," said Mickey. "You had _no choice_ but to call up the ultimate manifestation of primordial darkness, huh? To maintain your 'evil cred,' is that how it is? Well, I don't call that evil so much as…" He searched briefly for a good word. "…idiotic!"

"I wouldn't expect _you_ to understand—" Ursula began, but she was interrupted.

"Incoming!" Gaston announced, pointing up the Promenade. The rescue party and former captives were approaching at full gallop, in a very real sense fleeing from the mountain. Some of the faster characters were carrying the slower ones. Enough of them had weapons in hand to make the Villains pull together warily. But they weren't interested in another fight.

"It's _awful_!" said a wide-eyed Jasmine, pointing back in the general direction of the Matterhorn.

"I know," said Mickey. "Just remember: he'll be banished come sunrise."

"Aye, lad," said Scrooge. "The real question is, can we hold out that long? Look again." And he gestured with his cane up the Promenade.

Then Mickey saw it. Chernabog had flung out one arm, sending his shadow stretching, crawling like a live thing from the southern part of Fantasyland. And wherever that blackness fell, be it ground or wall or rooftop or planter hedge, the surface appeared to be boiling and writhing. _Things_ were emerging, hundreds of them, pushing their way through from the other side of…of whatever the surfaces represented at that point in time. Of Chernabog's shadow, perhaps. There were bony claws, and misshapen heads, and tails like rats' or lizards tails, all churning together like a mud puddle full of worms, if the worms were creating themselves out of the mud at the same time.

Chernabog was summoning them—the spirits of the dead, or the demons of Hell.

Or Dispirations.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Mickey knew that was what they were. They moved the same way, albeit more hesitantly than the ones he and the others had been fighting. And besides, he reflected with a tinge of bitterness, what else would they be? But there was something else different about them…something he couldn't quite make out at that distance and in the dark.

"_Mickey!_" Minnie hissed, seizing his arm and pulling him backward. He realized that he had let himself drift forward a few steps, trying to spot what was odd about the Dispirations.

"How very fascinating," said Jafar, moving to stand beside the mouse couple. "What do you suppose he intends to do with them all?"

"Nothing good for _our_ health, I'm sure," said Mickey. "Look, we can hash out our differences later. Right now, the very priority to keep everyone safe…even those of you whose fault this is. Nobody deserves to get caught in the middle of a swarm of Dispirations under the command of Chernabog. Got any ideas for where we can all take shelter until sunrise?"

"Oh, I have ideas, all right," said Jafar, swooping around to face Mickey, "but not, I'm afraid, the sort you're hoping for. You see, these creatures—Dispirations, you call them?—are, as you point out, under Chernabog's command." He leaned over and grinned smugly, mere inches from Mickey's face. "But Chernabog is under _our_ command." He gave Mickey a little shove in the chest with the head of his staff. "So you needn't worry about us. I assure you, we Villains will be just _peachy_."

"You have no idea what you're saying," Mickey said matter-of-factly. He intended to say more, but was interrupted by a noise of surprise from Peter Pan.

Hovering some seven or eight feet above the ground, the ageless boy was in a position to see more of what was going on than the rest of the crowd. "Look at that!" he cried, pointing.

A number of Dispirations had just finished materializing and pulled themselves free from Chernabog's shadow, leaving pits and scars in the ground and buildings—no, _not_ in the ground and buildings. The gouges appeared as patches of swirling haze, like little windows onto a distant region of space full of faintly glowing nebulae. Mickey realized with a shock of horror that they were nothing less than holes in the fabric of Disneyland's reality. What was visible through the gaps was Inpotentia itself. Just like in Ludwig von Drake's laboratory. Just like looking beyond the sky over Tomorrowland.

"There, ya see that? _Ya see that?_" Mickey barked at Jafar. "Still think this is such a good idea?"

"You know, Jafar, darling," Cruella said nervously, "it occurs to me he may have a point…"

Mickey neither noticed nor cared whether he got a response from the sorcerer. His mind was racing, putting together the pieces. Merlin and von Drake had warned him that Disneyland's anchor to the real world was weakening, and now Chernabog's presence was apparently straining it to the breaking point—or if not his presence, then what he was doing. He was summoning the Dispirations, and they were breaking through from Inpotentia…which meant they were _not_ coming from elsewhere in the park. That was the difference. These were _new_ Dispirations, taking on solid forms for the first time…and there simply wasn't enough reality left in Disneyland to keep it stable after they ripped across the boundary. He watched one hole flake around the edges and grow slightly larger. Another, in the wall of the Alice in Wonderland show building, sealed itself over…but instead of mock masonry, the gap filled with rough-hewn logs like those that made up the Frontierland gateway.

He became aware that Minnie was clutching his arm again. "What do we do?" she pled. "We're out of time!"

"Not yet," said Mickey. "We're still here, aren't we? We can still win this." He turned to address the Villains as a group and held out his hand. "Give me Triton's crown." When they hesitated, he shouted "Now! We don't have time for this! If too many more Dispirations come through, there won't _be_ a Disneyland for you to take over!"

"And why," said Shere Khan, "should we cooperate with you, instead of, say, restoring the park ourselves? Anyone can return to the last crown to the Castle, can't they? And the one who does—"

"I heard Cruella earlier," Mickey cut in. "But I wouldn't be so sure _anyone_ can do it. For one thing, you would need to have hands. So ask yourself…which of your fellow bad guys would _you_ trust to rule over you? Cruella? Gaston, maybe? Last I saw, _he_ had Triton's crown. How about the rest of you?"

As soon as he saw their faces, he knew he had chosen the right appeal. The Disney Villains are capable of teaming up and working together, but only for a loose definition of "team" and a given value of "together." There wasn't a one of them but intended to take the ultimate glory for her or himself, and wouldn't stand for it to go to another.

The leaders of the pack exchanged meaningful glances. Then Gaston stepped forward, crown in hand, still hesitant about handing it over.

Another roar from Chernabog shattered the air. As one, the characters on the ground looked up to see him make a directing gesture, then over at the massed Dispirations as they leapt into action and began charging up the Small World Promenade. The ground seemed to run like semi-molten wax under their feet, warping into misplaced shapes from elsewhere in the park—fronds of Adventureland plants and fragments of balcony railing from New Orleans Square, outcroppings of Main Street brickwork and abstract sculptures in Tomorrowland chrome.

"_Now_, Gaston!" Mickey cried, letting a hint of his desperation enter his voice. Looking like he was sucking on a lemon, the hunter tossed the crown over. Mickey caught it and shouted "Hold them off, all of you!", already starting to bolt for the "it's a small world façade. But he waved for Minnie to follow him, and the rest of the Sensational Six got the idea. As the other characters—including most of the Villains (Jack and Bagheera released their two captives so that the four of them could join in)—spread across the walkway to form a defensive wall, Mickey Mouse and his pals made a second try at their tower maneuver.

It went more quickly this time, because of adrenaline and a sense of urgency that led them to take more risks and care less about the wobbling. It still took a few minutes before the other five were in place and Mickey could start climbing toward the Pixie Crown. A lot can happen in a few minutes.

The Sensational Six, stacked fifteen feet high with their backs braced against the façade for what additional stability it could provide, had a clear view of it.

The Dispirations _flowed_ up the Small World Promenade like a surging tide. They had indeed patterned themselves after Chernabog's usual minions—spectral warriors riding skeletal horses, imps and harpies and semi-anthropomorphic beasts making guttural screeching noises. There were scores of them, a horde of talons and hooves and horns and ghostly blades and gibbering voices, leaving a wake of surreal corruption behind them. One slashed at a Chinese elm planted near Storybookland, severing a branch. It boiled away into nothing before it could hit the ground.

Donald yelped in shock, and Goofy let out a frantic "Gawrsh!"

"Oh, Mickey, please hurry!" said Minnie.

"I've almost got it!" he replied, struggling to keep his balance atop her shoulders. "Just hold it a little longer!" He found the right way to set his feet and touched Triton's crown to the Pixie Crown just as the Dispirations plowed into the defenders.

And just for a brief moment, as the waves of light crashed over him and the others for the fifth and final time, everything was all right.

Then it passed, and Mickey found himself on the ground again, with a solid Pixie Crown in his hands, practically _screaming_ to be placed. Or maybe it was the park itself, begging to be restored. And now, at last, he could do it…if he could only get past the nasty battle that stood between him and the Castle.

"I've got it!" he yelled, running toward the clamor. "Clear a path!"

"You heard the little rodent!" said Jafar. "He has the last crown!" And with that, the sorcerer turned and cast a fireball from his staff right at Mickey. It missed him, but continued burning on the pavement near his feet. Or maybe that was the intention, since the other Villains immediately withdrew from the battle and gathered in a horseshoe around him. It was obvious what they were up to.

"Playtime's over, m'boy," said Captain Hook.

The rest of the Six arrived to back Mickey up. "Traitors!" Donald bawled, striking his favorite fighting stance. "Backstabbers!" Words failed him, and he resorted to outraged squawking.

"Oh, don't act so surprised," said Ursula. "Even the Goof knows the leopard shark doesn't change its spots." Behind her, a covey of Dispirations caught hold of Peter Pan and dragged him down into their midst. Without the Villains opposing them, Chernabog's new minions were winning.

"So you're all one big happy evil family all of a sudden?" said Minnie.

"Of course not," Scar said simply, crouching to spring. The other Villains were also preparing to strike in their various fashions, and Mickey knew he couldn't possibly dodge all of them.

So he did the only thing he could think of. He lobbed the Pixie Crown into the air, over the Villains' heads and toward the battle, and yelled, "_Somebody catch it!_" The crown rose, tumbling, up to a height of nearly twenty feet. At that point, it was in Mickey's line of sight with Chernabog. And two things happened at once.

The first was that as Chernabog swept one huge hand past a cave in the side of the Matterhorn, a pale, shaggy, roaring figure lunged out, clamped onto the hand, and bit it.

"_Harold?_" chorused at least three members of the Sensational Six.

The second thing was that something sleek and winged swooped down out of the night and snatched the Pixie crown out of the air.

"Hey!" Mickey gaped. But a third thing was already happening, seizing his attention: urgent voices were becoming audible over the sounds of the fighting on the ground, which was subsiding slightly, and the bellows of the two monsters on the mountaintop. In the next instant, the owners of the voices appeared, rounding the Motorboat Lagoon at speed. It was Merlin and Professor von Drake, and they were flying…or something. Actually, it looked more like they were sitting on an invisible giant beach ball that was bouncing along the walkway. As they got closer, what they were shouting became intelligible—something about finding someone—but Mickey was barely listening, because he was distracted by the sight of what was approaching behind them.

It was the second onrushing horde he'd seen in the span of twenty minutes. But this one was larger than the one under Chernabog's command, and it was _much_ more diverse. He saw birds. And bats. And plenty of other kinds of animals, not all of them entirely plausible. And gleaming machines—robots? About there, he gave up on trying to classify them.

"It's quite all right!" Merlin was saying. "They're friendly!"

The Villains saw them too. "To _whom_?" Cruella wondered.

The invisible beach ball made a really _big_ bounce, carrying its two passengers right over the skirmish, and also over the Villains, and landed between then and the Sensational Six with a ground-shaking _whump_. Then there was a popping sound, and the Villains found themselves facing roughly two tons of lunk-jawed, rather annoyed dragon.

"Elliot!" Mickey said.

The two intellectuals were sitting on his back, although the quickly hopped off so that he could menace the evildoers free of distractions.

"We found the poor guy—" von Drake began, but there was no more time for conversation. The new crowd of creatures was joining the battle.

Almost at once, the tide turned back. Chernabog's Dispirations were already losing focus as their master devoted his attention to the sudden assault from Harold, and now _they_ were under assault from the newcomers, who outnumbered them three to one. A few of them near the edge of the melee managed to flee, but the others were swarmed. It was strange—instead of fighting the demons, exactly, the creatures were simply immobilizing them, and then the one so afflicted would dissolve, its substance flowing into its attackers and making them larger.

"Fellas," Mickey said quietly, fascinated, "what are they? Where did you find them?"

"All over the park," said Merlin. "They are, in fact, the Dispirations. We were just as surprised as you to learn of their reformed ways. We can only assume that Hypatia is responsible."

"Hypatia!" Daisy exclaimed. "Did you ever find her?"

"We certainly did," said Merlin, "but—"

There was a catastrophic cracking sound from somewhere in the park, and the ground began to shake. All around them, slowly but with a dreadful aura of inevitability, fissures began to open up in the ground, the structures, the trees, even the air itself, each one a gruesome wound in the park, bleeding its essence into the formlessness of Inpotentia. The gathered characters cried out in fear and tried to cluster together for security, uselessly, for what could would forming a huddle do against the dissolution of the very world around them?

"It's just as I feared!" von Drake wailed. "The space-time instabilities are reaching critical levels! You've got to hurry, Mickey!"

"Right!" he said. Then he remembered. "But the Pixie Crown…something stole it!" He flung up his hands in frustration, only to be startled when something landed around his right wrist. Of course it was the Pixie Crown, and while he was still marveling at its return, a lovely creature somersaulted down from above and dropped lightly to the ground in front of him. It was a winged wolf, longer and taller than a normal wolf but also slimmer, so that it probably weighed less. Its fur was silvery blue, the feathers of its great wings and birdlike forelegs every possible shade of gray-blue and gray-violet.

"Nonsense; she didn't steal it," said Merlin. "As we approached, we distinctly heard you plead for someone to catch it. She's developed quite a solicitous personality to go with her attractive new form."

"Oh, my," said Minnie. "It's Hypatia!"

Behind them, there was a horrible groaning noise as the "it's a small world" façade began to warp and uproot itself. The very land it was sitting on was tearing free from the park and disintegrating. Around the whole perimeter of Disneyland, bits were flying off and vanishing through the fissures.

"We're almost outa time!" Mickey said. "Hypatia, can you give me a ride to the Castle?"

"Can you take two?" said Minnie, firmly seizing Mickey's free hand.

Hypatia nodded and made a musical sound. She spread her wings and crouched so that the two mice could climb aboard her back, then sprang into the air. Mickey and Minnie gasped as the ground dropped away beneath them and the crumbling scenery of Fantasyland streaked by.

It took Hypatia less than a minute to cross the distance to Sleeping Beauty Castle, but she balked on the final approach. The upper turrets were surrounded by a network of gaping, undulating rifts, and flying anywhere near them would have been suicidal. Instead, the winged wolf touched down in the forward part of the Fantasyland courtyard, near the door to the Castle's interior.

"Thanks," said Mickey. "You did plenty. Take care of yourself." Clutching the Pixie Crown to his chest, he flung open the door and dashed in, with Minnie right by his side.

Then they had the steps to climb—a much harder task than normal, because the Castle was shaking like the revenge of San Andreas, and the space inside it was warping, making the stairwells steeper, or maybe it was their legs that were being made shorter, and they couldn't use the walls to steady themselves because there were fissures developing even indoors, growing along the stones as though chasing the pair. The constant skewing of perspective made them feel queasy.

Finally, they made it out onto the main parapet, and everything stabilized. The four crowns already placed were glowing, bathing the front of the Castle in bold colors, holding off the decay with the strength of the history they represented. It was a welcome sight indeed, for the rest of the park—what they could see of it—was so far gone by this point that it was almost unrecognizable. Only a few islands of normality were left amid a sea of mishmashed textures, yawning chasms, and warped structures, all of it illuminated by what used to be the sky and was now the kaleidoscopic fog of Inpotentia. But the crowns were still real, and that meant the decades they stood for were also real, had really happened. Disneyland might be a rapidly failing construct of mere memories, but at least they weren't _false_ memories. Mickey took from that what comfort he could.

He brought out the Pixie Crown, and it began to shine like the others, a shade of gold so bright and fierce that the two mice had to shut their eyes against it. But that was all right, because Mickey didn't need to see in order to know where to throw it—he knew the layout of the Castle by heart. Anyway, it felt almost like the crown was straining to leap out of his hands and fly to the turret of its own accord.

So he let it.

* * *

The first four time jumps had felt like moving at tremendous speed in a perfectly straight line. This one, however, felt like being trapped inside a clothes dryer that had been picked up by a tornado that was being run through a particle accelerator. And when Mickey opened his eyes a crack to watch the transformation, all he saw was a tumultuous whirl of colored sparks like the embers of fireworks. It was dizzying, but beautiful, and he opened his eyes all the way and nudged Minnie so that she would watch too.

They were still standing on the parapet of Sleeping Beauty Castle, but instead of being at the center of Disneyland—even a distorted and collapsing Disneyland—it was at the eye of a hurricane of light and shadow. All five crowns were in place on their respective turrets and glowing, with little bits of the glow constantly shooting off and joining the cyclone.

For the first minute or so, it was just chaos. Then like-colored sparks began joining up into trails, which began drawing together into swatches, which began cohering into solid forms. If you could take a picture postcard, turn all the colors to water, spin it so that the picture blurred into a spiral-patterned mess, and then reverse this process, it would approximate what the two mice witnessed as Disneyland was restored. Strings of light coiled themselves into all the beloved landmarks, from the Main Street train station to the hills behind Toontown, from Splash Mountain to Space Mountain. Fountains of light erupted from the freshly set ground and froze into the shapes of trees. An azure comet arced overhead, its tail spreading like ink in water to paint a clear sky. At that point, it all became so dazzling that they could no longer watch everything, so they flung themselves into each other's arms and stayed that way until the brilliance finally subsided.

The first sound they heard was a shrill, warbling bird call. Mickey and Minnie opened their eyes and stared, awestruck, at the perfectly ordinary starling perched on the parapet railing. The next sound they heard was a voice from the ground in front of the Castle: "Hey, we're back!"

Hercules's voice.

The crowns were in place, winking in the morning light. The gold and blue banners hung in elegantly draping folds from the walls and turrets. The giant gems caught the sun and threw spangles of every conceivable color onto nearby surfaces. Last but not least, Mickey noted with immense satisfaction as he and Minnie walked to the edge of the parapet and waved down in triumph at all the friends who had joined the Disney Family in the last ten years, the blue and gold, mouse-eared "50" plaque hung in its proper place over the Castle archway, just above Walt's coat of arms.

"We did it," Minnie said softly.

"Yeah. We did," Mickey agreed. Then the heady reality of it caught up with him, and he burst into exultant laughter and literally jumped for joy. "We really did it! We won, Minnie!"

"You crazy mouse," she said, pulling him into another hug. "I knew we would. How could we not, when we were following you?"

"Aw, shucks."

By then, the other characters who had been left back in Fantasyland and Toontown were streaming through the archway below them, and the cheering was beginning in earnest. Mickey couldn't even recall the last time he had been so magnificently happy. They had saved Disneyland and all their friends and everything was right again. And if he looked up Main Street, he could just barely make out the edge of the crowd of guests gathering to visit the park for the 50th Anniversary Celebration. The Happiest Homecoming on Earth? Yes, yes it was.

Which is why it almost didn't register in his consciousness when a sliver of darkness in the air twisted open and suddenly Maleficent was there on the parapet with them. "Well done indeed, little mouse," she said calmly. "Once again, the hero is victorious."

* * *

Mickey's elation slammed into a brick wall. Not _now_!

As she had before, Minnie interposed herself between Maleficent and Mickey, spreading her arms and lowering her head slightly, like a goose defending its young from a predator. "Oh, no you don't! We _won_! We beat everything you threw at us, and even a few things that someone else did! You've _lost_, Maleficent," she said. "Just suck it up and leave Mickey alone already!"

Maleficent blinked. "As you wish, Miss Mouse," she said evenly. Then, before either of the two mice had the chance to get properly alarmed at such suspiciously quick acquiescence, she made an abrupt diagonal sweep of her right arm. The glow emanating from the orb of the staff flicked forward, expanding, and enveloped Minnie, sealing her inside a globe of magical force.

Mute with shock, all Mickey and Minnie could do was hammer against the barrier from their respective sides, just long enough to realize the futility of it. Then Maleficent moved again, holding her staff aloft, and the sphere launched skyward, well out of Mickey's reach and still rising, until _a swirling phenomenon, neither clouds nor wind, opened over the Castle like an evil eye, casting harsh ultraviolet light onto a horrified Mickey_, and swallowed it up without a trace. The vortex closed up after it, but a hint of it remained as a discolored blot on the sky, bleeding wisps of black light into the surrounding air.

"There, that should do it," Maleficent said with calm satisfaction, like someone finishing up a knotty household chore. She met Mickey's eyes for a brief moment, answering his stricken gaze with a smirk of triumph. Then, without another word, she was gone. Mickey was left alone on the Castle parapet, staring aghast at the high-up spot where Minnie had disappeared.

The silence was absolute. Mickey was dimly aware that there was a crowd on the ground behind him, probably only a hair less appalled than he, but the sheer horror was numbing his mind, and was staggering back against the parapet railing, and he was tipping off-balance and falling…

The response was immediate. Pegasus zipped up to catch him, and the Good Fairies conjured up cushions and glasses of water, whatever they thought he might need, and Donald and Goofy and Pluto all drew in close to him, just for the closeness. For moral support.

"No," Mickey was saying in a voice as timorous as the squeak of a normal, tiny mouse. "No, no, no, Minnie, no." Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, glaring at the remnant of the vortex that had engulfed his girlfriend. "_No! Minnie!_"

"Whoa, whoa, take it easy!" Donald said.

Mickey shook his head slowly, brows tightening with fierce resolve. "I have to follow," he said quietly. In the hush of the gathering, it carried like a public-address announcement. "I have to get up _there_ and go after Minnie."

No one was about to question whether it was the right thing to do, or even whether it would be possible. Mickey would find a way. But Daisy said what they were all thinking. "Surely that's what Maleficent _wants_. It's a trap."

"Of course it's a trap," said Mickey, getting to his feet in a rather wobbly fashion. "That's why I'm going up there _alone_—and I don't want any argument from anyone. None of you are to go anywhere _near_ that thing, understood?" He shook his head, realizing how he sounded. "Wait…I didn't mean it like that. It's not that I don't appreciate everything you've done up until now. And it's not that I don't trust you to take care of yourselves. But whatever the trap is that Maleficent's setting, she's setting it for _me_." Tears began to prick at his eyes, and he spoke faster. "You all saw what she did to Minnie. She could have done it to me instead, but she didn't. She wants a—a showdown, and she won't stand for anyone else interfering. So I've got to do this alone."

No one else spoke. The silence was pregnant with anticipation. "But," Mickey said, forcing a brave smile in defiance of the tears that were starting to spill over, "I wouldn't say no to whatever help you can give me before I go."

"Of course!" said Goofy. "Anything you need, pal!"

"Just say the words," said the Genie. "Within canonically established limits, of course."

"That's the problem," said Mickey. "I don't know what I need. I don't know what will _work_ in Inpotentia."

"Sure you do," said Daisy. "_Ideas_ will work. That's the whole point of the place, right?"

"Let's think about this logically," said Merlin. "Maleficent would hardly arrange a confrontation in a place where _her_ magic was ineffective. It stands to reason that anything you bring with you should operate more-or-less normally."

"Come on," said Donald. "Let's go get your Hat."

"No," said Mickey. "I'm too wound up—I wouldn't be able to get the box open."

"Well, maybe we can find a substitute," said the Fairy Godmother. "I know!" She waved her wand, and a sparkling point of light zipped up Main Street and returned levitating a hat from the Mad Hatter shop—not the popular velour mockup of the Sorcerer's Hat, but a gold-colored mouse ears beanie. A length of thread was busily stitching Mickey's name on the back even as it floated up and settled onto his head.

"Okay…I don't mean to complain, but this feels really stupid," he said. Far too small for him, the hat perched on his cranium like an overturned teacup, and the shiny gold ears were pressing awkwardly against his real ears.

"It's your ultimate test and you've no time to rest," the Godmother chanted, waggling her wand over Mickey's clumsily adorned head, "so let this help you come shining through." He felt the tingle of transformation beginning, and closed his eyes. "Just a quaint little seed for the magic you need… Bibbity, bobbity, boo!"

There was a soft explosion of light, followed by little appreciative noises from the characters. Mickey opened his eyes and was unsurprised to find that his trademark red shorts had been transformed into the droopy robe and knotted sash that comprised his Sorcerer's Apprentice costume. Something very like the Sorcerer's Hat was on his head, but when he reached up to touch it, it didn't feel quite solid. "It's not quite the same as the real one, of course," said the Fairy Godmother, "but perhaps in a realm that's all to do with imagination, it'll be enough."

"I sure hope so," said Mickey. "That leaves just one thing. Tinkerbell?" The pixie zipped up front and center. "I meant it when I said I didn't want anyone else to take a risk by going near where the portal was, and that means…well, you know the drill."

Tink nodded, rubbed her tiny hands together to generate sufficient pixie dust, and began dousing Mickey with the sparkling powder."

"Say…you need any help coming up with a happy thought?" asked Peter Pan.

"No, I think I can manage, but thanks." _We won…Disneyland is back to normal…this is just a—a loose end that needs tying up._ It would have to do. Mickey lifted off the ground and began rising slowly toward the dark patch of sky. "In fact, thanks to _all_ of you. For everything. For bein' here." His ascent accelerated, and he looked up in order to aim himself more precisely toward his goal. Once he was within a dozen feet of it, he glanced down to see everyone waving. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called "Don't worry! I—_we'll_ be back soon!"

Then the portal yawned again, as though it were expecting him, and Mickey Mouse willingly coasted into the nebulous expanse of Inpotentia.

To Be Continued...

_

* * *

__A/N: Wow, that went fast! It's been what, about two weeks since my last update? It helped that I had about a page of it written already. Some of you might have recognized the "sneak preview" I offered a while back as an apology for a long delay between updates, as well as proof that I had the basic plot all planned out almost from the beginning of the project. I have the first bit of the next chapter pre-written also, so with any luck the next update isn't far off. We'll see! In any case, we're in the home stretch now—just a couple more chapters to go!_

_—Karalora_


	31. Chapter 31

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 31: Dreams Left Upon a Shelf

In the blank vastness of Inpotentia, Mickey Mouse drifted.

Contrary to what he had expected, it was not utterly dark nor totally silent—Mickey found that he could hear his own agitated breathing, and could see his own body as clearly as if it were floodlit…although he could not identify any source of light. It was as though he were an isolated figure being projected onto an otherwise empty movie screen. Then his eyes adjusted to the peculiar conditions and he began to notice inconsistencies in the darkness—eddies of shadowy cloudiness, specks of color that seemed to belong to distant objects, too distant for him to make out what they were.

Something soft struck him gently in the back of the head. He reached back and felt knitted yarn. It turned out to be a hat—a winter hat, banded red, green and blue and topped with a fluffy bobble. An appliqué patch near the bottom edge depicted Huey, Dewey, and Louie in winter clothing.

Mickey scratched his head in puzzlement. It seemed like the general sort of hat that might be sold at Disneyland during the winter months, but to the best of his knowledge this particular design had never been offered.

Something else drifted by. Mickey snatched at it and found it to be a wristwatch, almost entirely normal except that the number at the top of the face was 13 rather than 12. It was a copy of the hall clock in the Haunted Mansion. Again, it was something that might logically have been sold at the park, but never actually had been.

Mickey was beginning to detect a pattern.

The third object engulfed him completely, for it was a full-sized beach towel. Mickey was just able to recognize the garish design, based on the attraction poster for the Enchanted Tiki Room, before he was cocooned in terrycloth. As he struggled out of it, he realized that he had landed on a solid surface.

Clumsy with anticipation, he clawed the towel off his head and opened his eyes—only to squeeze them shut again when they came under assault from tremendously bright light. When he dared to open them again, he did it little by little, letting them acclimate so that he could see where he was.

He saw sky, electric blue sky splashed with dazzlingly white fair-weather clouds, like the most wonderful spring day in history. Yet at the same time it was something greater than sky—deeper and vaster somehow, more like the reaches of outer space than like anything that belonged to a mere planetary atmosphere. If he shifted his focus, he could see what looked like layers of deeper blue beyond the electric blue, shading to indigo and then black. But it hurt his eyes to look that hard.

Bizarrely, despite the glaring hue of the sky, there was no sun. The light seemed to be coming directly from the blueness itself.

He was sitting on an island in the sky, a little chunk of land perhaps fifteen feet across, planted with beds of maroon pansies. At the center stood a large topiary figure, but Mickey paid it little heed at first, instead venturing to the edge of the islet and peeking down in order to see just how high up he was. It proved to be a meaningless question, for there was no actual _ground_ to be seen, only more of the same field of sky, in fact an endless ocean of sky, going on forever in every direction, broken only by patches of those gorgeous white clouds, as well as, Mickey now saw, varicolored bits that must be more floating islands.

He turned his attention to the topiary statue. It was an image of himself, considerably larger than life and striking an exuberant pose with arms spread. It was oddly familiar, and not just because it was his own likeness.

Around that point, he realized that the floating platforms were not stationary, but were moving respective to each other. One about the same size as the one he was standing on cruised alongside it, enabling him to clearly see its cross-section with layers of dirt and concrete and odd bits of pipes and electrical wires sticking out. The upper surface was paved over with asphalt, and there was a souvenir cart on it. The two islands were close enough for Mickey to recognize some of the merchandise—camera film and batteries and postcards and refrigerator magnets and various odds and ends, most bearing the Disneyland logo and some prominently featuring imagery from the 1967 remodel of Tomorrowland. The islets soared side-by-side for a moment, almost near enough for Mickey to jump from one to the other if that were not an _utterly insane_ proposition, and then skewed off from each other again.

Another soon drifted into view, this one quite small and bearing only a pair of doorways, one labeled **Dames** and the other **Monsieurs**, with corresponding silhouettes of a woman and a man wearing flounced clothing and carnival crowns. Through the doorways, tiled walls and floors were visible, but without any actual restroom building to be part of the setup.

Mickey slumped back down into a sitting position. Inpotentia was getting weirder, and weird in more ways, by the minute, and so far he hadn't the foggiest idea how he was going to find Minnie and/or Maleficent.

As he stared out at the skyscape, racking his brain for a solution, or even a hint, something new passed into view: a huge, fluffy cloud bank, white as marble and roiling like a handful of pearl barley in a pot of soup. Plumes of vapor curled out from the main mass, in a manner uncannily similar to solar prominences, and thick shafts of warm light occasionally pierced the cloud's surface and beamed outward. There was something immensely inviting about it.

Mickey's islet veered slightly in its flight, and a moment's examination revealed that all of them were following curving paths, because they were orbiting the big cloud. The regularity of the courses was somewhere between the sedate, orderly march of planets circling a star and the madcap quantum uncertainty of electrons whirling about an atomic nucleus. Mickey watched them swing along their paths, occasionally coming within a handspan of colliding but never actually doing so, and decided to revisit the idea of jumping from one to another.

As it happened, one was just approaching, a nice broad, flat one that seemed like it would be relatively safe to leap to. Mickey crouched, calculating, and launched himself across the gap. The lingering effects of the pixie dust helped some, and he landed squarely on the other island…and immediately felt like he had seen it before. It was flat because it featured not a structure, but a patterned pavement made of tessellated brick tiles. It was the pattern that was familiar; Mickey _knew_ he had seen it before, he just couldn't quite remember—the concept art! For the remodel of Fantasyland in the Eighties! The artist had sketched in a patterned ground to keep the new courtyard layout from having a big blank space in the middle, but it hadn't actually been installed.

In a flash, Mickey remembered where he knew the topiary from—another concept sketch, this one for the entry tunnel into Toontown. The walkway in the picture had been lined with topiaries of the Fab Five, but they had been left out of the real thing when the project ran over budget. Suddenly he realized that all the soaring islets represented much the same thing. Like the watch and the towel, they were all things that _might_ have been part of Disneyland, but never actually made it. Unrealized ideas, the very essence of Inpotentia. They hadn't turned into Dispirations because they had all been documented in some way, even if it was just some Imagineer's personal doodle pad. Little brainstorms that never got any further than the Blue Sky phase…

He chuckled to himself. Of course. Then he shook his head and turned his attention back to the task of jumping from platform to platform. _Minnie was waiting for him._ The thought energized him, and he sprinted to the edge of the brick tiles and practically flung himself at the next islet, with an early design for the Splash Mountain log vehicles that had been rejected on the grounds of not being cute enough. From there he made his way across a little archipelago of ideas for the lampposts lining Magic Way, and then up to a storefront with no store behind it, bearing a sign with a different proposed name for what had eventually been dubbed Disneyana. At that point, he paused to catch his breath, checked his progress, and found that there were only a few orbits left between him and the cloud. The next one was several feet farther away than he was normally comfortable jumping, but that hardly mattered under the circumstances—he jumped anyway, and if his successful landing next to a large barrel labeled SARSAPARILLA was more due to pixie dust or updrafts than his own athleticism, he didn't care.

As he was sizing up the next leap, a ribbon of cloud whipped out, twenty or twenty-five feet, swept across his platform, and snagged him as neatly as a jellyfish catching lunch. With a short cry of shock, Mickey was yanked into the heart of the white fluff.

* * *

He landed amid thick fog. The fog didn't surprise him, but the landing did.

The phrase "pea soup" sprang to mind as he looked around him, and up and down. He could barely see his own feet, the mist was so dense, and the ground felt fragile and uneven beneath them. He felt his hair rise—although he had intended to enter the cloud, the fact that he had been grabbed and _pulled_ in unnerved him. And not being able to see past his own nose…he didn't trust the situation one bit.

"Show yourself!" he demanded. He left off the standard "who's there?" because he already had a pretty good idea.

There was no reply. Mickey took a step and felt the surface he was standing on crack and crumble out from under him. He reflexively backpedaled, groping for something to steady himself, and one hand found something like a smooth pole, neither wood nor metal. Clinging to it, hoping it was as solid as it felt, he scrambled, found his footing. As he stood there, panting with delayed alarm, he realized that the air he was gulping down carried a whiff of sugar and peppermint. The pole he was grasping was slightly sticky.

After a moment, Mickey came down from his fright. He smacked his forehead with his free hand. "Am I the Sorcerer's Apprentice or aren't I?" he asked himself. Making certain of his balance, he adjusted his hat—true to the Fairy Godmother's prediction, it felt more real, here—rubbed his hands together to summon up some power, raised his arms over his head, and finally flung them forward and outward. It worked—a brisk breeze kicked up, blowing the mist away in a widening patch around him and enabling him to see his surroundings.

He was standing on a ridge of a peculiar mountain made of some sort of glassy, garishly colorful stone. The sugar smell grew stronger as the fog cleared, and it soon became evident that the mountain wasn't made of stone at all, but candy—rock candy in bold shades of pink, orange, and green. The pole was actually a giant candy cane, one of several in a cluster. There were gumdrop outcroppings, lollipop forests, and veins of licorice running through the cliff faces.

A place-name popped into Mickey's head: _Big Rock Candy Mountain_… The originally planned setting for the Casey Junior Circus Train that had been deemed a little _too_ colorful to build for real, although the model had been delicious. Here in Inpotentia, naturally enough, the whole thing really was made of candy. And now the mist was rolling down off the slopes of the mountain and the clear space was spreading, and more of what Mickey could only think of as Disneyland-That-Never-Was was becoming visible.

Under other circumstances, he would have found it magnificent. As in the skyscape he had traversed in order to get there, each attraction sat on its own island, but these were of course much larger, and instead of flying through the air, they were stably rooted in a sea of fog, like the peaks of hills rising through low clouds. There were maybe fifteen in all, of various sizes, connected to each other by bridges ranging in type from a simple affair of knotted rope to an elaborate glass or crystal construction lined with prismatic sculptures. The one closest to his position, linking Big Rock Candy Mountain to an L-shaped section of an Eighteenth Century New England street (_Liberty Street…_), looked like a natural stone arch. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of the islands or the nature of the bridges joining them. The whole scene was twilit, as though under an overcast sky around sunset, and indeed the sky overhead was blank and gray. There was not another living soul to be seen.

Or was there? Scanning the panorama of unused attractions for possible clues to Minnie's location (though he had no idea what to look for), Mickey spotted a flicker of movement among the colonial-style buildings of Liberty Street. Almost without thinking, he began scrambling down the side of the candy mountain. It was steep, but there were plenty of hand- and footholds, and when a fragile spur broke off in his grip, he simply popped it into his mouth and enjoyed the sugar. Soon he was on the ground and jogging across the stone arch.

"Hello?" he called as he loped onto the cobblestones. "Is someone there?" There came no answer, and no sign. Mickey slowed to a walk. Had he only imagined it?

No!—he heard a sound, as of hurrying footsteps. It seemed to be coming from around the corner of the street. He followed, and again found nothing—nothing except another bridge, at the end of the street where the harbor would have gone if the area had been built at Disneyland. On the other side was another block of street, like a slightly more urban version of Main Street ending in a broad cul-de-sac—Edison Square. There, again, was the flash of something moving, too far away for Mickey to make out what it was, but at least he could be sure now that he wasn't seeing things.

"Hey!" he called to the other, breaking into a run again. "Hey, wait!"

The chase continued for several minutes, the not-quite-seen stranger leading Mickey on a chaotic zigzagging path from island to island, down the winding paths of International Street and around the circular pond of the Duck Bumps and past a full-sized mockup of the airship _Hyperion_, through the sacred groves of Mythia and among the hot sets of Hollywoodland. And all the while, the other person never made a sound, nor let Mickey see any of themself but the most fleeting of glimpses, at such a distance that he had no hope of seeing what they actually looked like.

He finally lost the trail in a small, square-ish plaza fronted by building facades in the style of Chinese architecture. Much of the space was occupied by a sort of patio dining area, with tables and chairs arranged so as to have a good view of a raised stage rather like a curtained gazebo with a pagoda roof., Mickey collapsed, breathless, onto a chair and had a look around. The area also featured hibiscus shrubs in planters and a fountain decorated with a laughing Buddha statue. _Chinatown…_

Gradually catching his breath, Mickey let his glance fall upon the table. There was a folded piece of paper sitting under the salt shaker, and his name was written on it. Intrigued, he picked it up. A coin tucked inside fell out into Mickey's hand as he unfolded it. He held the coin aside for a moment while he read the note:

"_I figured you'd wind up here sooner or later. Sorry I can't help you more, but we both know you're more effective when you figure things out as you go along. Still, this should get you a clue. Drop it in the donation box._"

It was signed not with a name but with a sort of smudge, which actually proved to be a silhouette of a round head with long ears. Despite his growing frustration with the circumstances, Mickey smiled a little. Then he turned his attention to the coin.

It was made of brass, about the size of a quarter but a little thinner, with a square hole stamped out of the center. A Chinese coin, then, logically enough. Mickey read the phrase "donation box" again from the note, and began looking around for such an object. He found it bolted to the side of the stage: a carved rosewood box with a slot in the lid. He shrugged, walked over to it, and dropped in the coin.

Almost instantly, the sound of a gong rang out over the plaza, as from a loudspeaker. Mickey jumped three feet, landed slightly off-balance, and staggered backward until he regained his equilibrium. A young woman's voice with a light Mandarin accent was speaking.

"One thousand gratitudes for your donation, honorable one. Hark now to the wisdom of the Teacher of Teachers."

Mickey smacked his forehead. _One thousand gratitudes?_ Maybe it was just as well Chinatown had never been built. All the same, if Oswald thought this would help him, he wasn't inclined to argue. He sat back and watched the stage curtains slide open.

The figure on the stage—audio-animatronic, naturally—was an old man with a long gray-white beard, garbed in ornate silk robes and seated on a chair so fancy that it almost qualified as a throne. He held a scroll in one hand and an inkbrush in the other. His eyes were closed at first, but he opened them as the curtains stopped moving, and began to speak in a solemn voice.

"Confucius say, do nothing to another that you would not want done to yourself. Confucius say, to know what you know, and to admit what you do not know, is to have true knowledge. Confucius say, he who seeks virtue shall surely find it."

Mickey fidgeted in his seat. If this was just going to be a laundry list of proverbs delivered in that outrageously stilted dialect, he might have to question Oswald's judgment after all.

"Confucius say, pay attention when I'm talking to you."

Mickey started and stared at the figure of the sage, who looked as serene and dispassionate as ever. "Who, me?" he asked.

"Confucius say, if in seeking you find no one else, you must look to yourself. Confucius also say, he who hires a teacher but ignores the lecture wastes both his money and his time and is twice over a fool."

Mickey took that to mean, "You don't see anyone else here, do you? Besides, you paid for this." He swallowed, embarrassed, and addressed the great thinker. "Confucius, sir…Wise One…whatever…I'm in a heap of trouble here. My best girl has been kidnapped and I have no idea where to go to find her or the kidnapper. But…uh…my pal Oswald seems to think you can help."

"Confucius say, the cautious seldom err."

"That's all well and good, but it doesn't help me find Minnie."

"Confucius say, it does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

"But it _does_ matter! Who knows _what_ Maleficent's doin' to Minnie while I'm here chatting with you?"

Confucius pulled a face. "You know, you're not making this very easy for me," he said, setting aside his stationery. "I spent my life pondering the ways by which men might be made virtuous, not figuring out how a cartoon mouse could rescue his sweetheart from a wicked fairy. It's going to take me a little time to find some maxims that are applicable to your situation."

Mickey was taken aback, and no longer certain that Confucius _was_ just an audio-animatronic. After all, Big Rock Candy Mountain was really made of candy here…

"Sorry," he said in a small voice. "Take your time."

Confucius rubbed his chin for a moment. "Ah," he said. "These should do. Confucius say, he who would direct the future must study the past. Confucius also say, wherever you go, go with all your heart."

Mickey tried to parse that in relation to his predicament. _Study the past…I've certainly been doing plenty of _that_ lately…go with all your heart…that's exactly what I'm trying to do, Minnie _is_ my heart._ "I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid I'm not getting what you mean."

Confucius sighed, picked up his inkbrush again, and gestured at the ground. "Confucius say, study the past. The _recent_ past, if that's any help. And follow your heart. I shouldn't think _you_ would need to be told that."

Mickey followed the pointing brush. There on the ground, something sparkled faintly. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be the thin outline of his own footprint. There was still a little pixie dust on his shoes, and he had left a barely perceptible trail. _Study the past_… It suddenly occurred to Mickey that Oswald had led him by an awfully circuitous route in order to get here.

He approached the stage once again. "Sir…do you mind if I, uh…?" He made a little gesture to indicate that he wanted to climb up to the top of its tiered roof.

"Confucius say, without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established. Nonetheless…render yourself unconscious."

"Render…? Oh, 'knock yourself out.' Heh. Thank you, Confucius. For everything." He prepared to climb.

"One more thing for you to keep in mind, Mickey Mouse: Confucius say, repay kindness with kindness, but repay injury with _justice_."

"No kidding. Thanks again. Maybe I'll see you around sometime, huh?"

"Confucius say, the small man comes and goes as he pleases without regard for virtue, but the superior man brings a muffin basket on return visits."

"I'll make a note of it," Mickey said with a chuckle. Confucius settled back into his initial pose, and the curtains began sliding closed. Mickey gripped one of the square columns supporting the stage roof and began to haul himself up.

Within a few minutes, he had reached the uppermost pagoda-like tier, from where he could see most of the tracks he had left. Despite the gaps in several places and the oblique angle, he was able to piece together the shape of his course.

It was lopsided and the outline was far from smooth and there were a few extraneous lines, but it was very clearly a Valentine-style heart. _Go with all your heart_…

On the other hand, looked at another way, it was a stylized arrowhead. In that case, it was pointing to a bridge right at the edge of the cleared area, leading off into the surrounding fog.

Mickey took a few more moments to work out the shortest path to his new destination before descending from the pagoda roof. Chinatown was still once more, the curtains fully drawn across Confucius's stage.

"Mickey Mouse say, update your script for the 21st Century," he muttered wryly before taking his leave of the area.

On his approach to the bridge, Mickey wondered why Oswald had taken him on such a wild trip and then dropped him off in Chinatown and had him ask the sage for help, which turned out to be an interpretation of the wild trip. Why not just lead him straight where he needed to go? The only possibility that came to mind was that Oswald himself didn't want to cross that bridge, which was not a comforting thought.

When he reached it, he began to get an inkling as to why. Made of hewn stone, the bridge looked like it had once been as solid as anything, only now many of the great slabs were cracked and eroding, and it was patched and shored up in many places by weathered wood planking, and mottled over much of its surface with moss and lichens. He wasn't at all certain it would take his weight, especially without knowing how long it went on.

"Okay," he told himself. "No problem. Oswald wouldn't send me to certain doom. It's probably more stable than it looks." He prodded the stones experimentally with his foot. They failed to suddenly collapse, so he put a little weight on them. Still, no ominous shifting.

And it wasn't like he had any other options.

Mickey squared his shoulders, hiked up his robe so as to avoid tripping on it, and set out.

The bridge rose gently for about twenty yards, forming a simple arch that began to level off just where it disappeared into the mist. As Mickey made his way up the slope, the stones and boards occasionally swayed a little under his feet, but no worse than that. Soon he had arrived at the fog bank, which rose up almost like a solid wall.

Well, not for long. Mickey summoned up another breeze to clear things up ahead of him, revealing more of the same antiquated stonework, and resumed walking. This time, however, the wind was channeled by the short safety walls on either side of the bridge, creating a minor vortex effect, and the fog curled back around behind Mickey after he had gone several more feet. He found himself in the center of a moving pocket of clear air, surrounded on every side by impenetrable grayness. It was profoundly unsettling, but he didn't want to risk putting any more strain on the deteriorating masonry by calling up a stronger wind.

And it went on like this, pace after pace after pace, long after he would have expected to reach the other end of the bridge given the shape of the arch. To make matters worse, the light seemed to be fading. Or maybe the fog around his little sphere was getting thicker—either way, at this rate he had only a few minutes of visibility left.

His foot snagged on a leafy vine growing over the stones, and he yanked it free with a grunt of annoyance. That sound, however, was eclipsed by a series of snaps as the plant tore free from the surface of the bridge, followed by a drawn-out crunch as the slabs, suddenly deprived of one source of support, sagged and began to break apart.

Mickey cried out in alarm as the bridge started to tilt out from under him. All concerns about visibility forgotten, he broke into a run, charging right into the fog, thinking only to put as much distance as possible, as fast as possible, between himself and the zone of collapse. After several frenetic seconds, he tripped on a rough spot and went sprawling. He cringed, expecting at any second to drop into the unknown void, but the shuddering and crashing died away behind him.

Mickey got shakily to his feet and took stock of his new situation. He had apparently run right through the fog bank and out the other side, because he could see the last leg of the bridge stretching away in front of him. He glanced up at a night sky—moonless, but spattered with stars in numbers such as he rarely got to see anymore unless he was on a camping trip or there was a city-wide power failure.

Then he looked ahead to where the bridge was leading him. It was a castle.

But it was not very much like Sleeping Beauty Castle at all. It was a looming, forbidding fortress, stark gray, perched on a rocky bluff. A _functional_ castle, like the ones that had appeared in early concept drawings of Disneyland before Walt and the Imagineers realized that the park's centerpiece needed to look cozy and friendly. The bridge ran right up to the main gate, over what Mickey could only assume was the castle's moat, though when he looked down all he could see was another river of mist.

The windows of the castle glowed with torchlight. As Mickey approached, the air acquired an unpleasant electric feeling, a gust of bitter wind swept across the bridge, and the lights flared green. Things like fat black snakes crawled up out of the vapor-covered moat and slithered up the walls and coiled around the turrets in criss-crossing paths, and then bristled with spikes, for they were not snakes but thorny briars. And over it all, he heard Maleficent's throaty chuckle, challenging him to step inside the gate and face her.

So he did.

To Be Continued…

* * *

_A/N: As you might have guessed, some of the shelved ideas Mickey encounters in this chapter did eventually wind up being used in a greatly altered form. Disney never just throws anything away, not even ideas. Liberty Street became Liberty Square at the Magic Kingdom, Edison Square was downgraded into a single attraction, the Carousel of Progress, and International Street was **up**graded into the World Showcase at Epcot. Some aspects of Hollywoodland made it into Mickey's Toontown, while others were incorporated into Hollywood Pictures Backlot at Disney's California Adventure._

_Most of Confucius's lines are actual sayings of his, although I reworded some of them slightly to sound better in context. And added the stupid "Confucius say" bit, because you just **know** that if they had actually built this thing back in the Fifties, that would have been part of the script. That sort of thing was part of the charm of the decade, and by "charm" I mean "forehead-smackingly embarrassing ethnocentrism and American cultural imperialism." Hey, kids! Ignorant racism is **funny**!_

_Sorry. Soapbox time over._

_On a completely different note, more information has become available about "Epic Mickey" since I mentioned it in the Author's Note a couple of chapters ago. In particular, I urge you to look up the video of the artist sketching Mickey facing off with one of the "Beetleworx" enemies. It's overlaid with one of the music tracks from the game, and if it is at all indicative of the soundtrack as a whole, it's just one more thing to wait upon tenterhooks in anticipation of. (When you get to be my age, you can end a sentence with a preposition if you want to.)_

_—Karalora_


	32. Chapter 32

Crowns of the Kingdom

Chapter 32: Do You Believe in Magic?

The portcullis slammed to the ground just after Mickey walked under it, gouging out chips of stone, but he hardly reacted. He had expected exactly that; it was so typical of Maleficent. So, too, was the courtyard of the grim castle—a barren quadrangle illuminated by the sickly greenish flames of torches mounted to the walls. He supposed he was meant to dash inside the halls, fight his way through hordes of goons or Dispirations or whatever Maleficent was using for cannon fodder by now, fling himself up a staircase to the tallest tower—or down one into a deep dungeon—to find Minnie, and then fall right into an inescapable trap. Well, nuts to that.

"Here I am, Maleficent!" Mickey called out, more bravely than—_no, don't think like that!_—_exactly_ as bravely as he felt. "Bring it on!"

"Ah, Mickey," Maleficent's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "The mouse that roared, come to face the spider in her own web. And I see you've even dressed for the part."

"Don't be ridiculous," Mickey said, turning around and glancing up at the barred windows that overlooked the courtyard, as though he might be able to spot Maleficent glaring down from one of them. "This place doesn't belong to you."

"But it suits me so well, don't you think? So much like home. And so easy to bend to my will….like _this_!"

The ground heaved, throwing Mickey off his feet. He sat up just as more black, woody briars erupted through the paving-slabs of the courtyard, growing with frightening speed. One burst upward so close behind Mickey that the thorns snagged the back of his robe and pulled him into the air with it. He yelped and reached back to grab the branch and stabilize himself, but the thorns were too dense. So he was left, dangling precariously on the end of a creaking vine while all around him, its brothers and sisters lashed back and forth, twisting and interweaving. Within minutes, there was no sign of the courtyard at all, or of the sky. The briars had completely enclosed a space the size of a large cathedral—in fact, they defined it. There was nothing to see but spiky stems, some slender and whiplike, others gnarled into lumpy masses.

"Mickey! Oh, Mickey!"

His heart leaped, and he twisted in the runner's grip, trying to see where the voice had come from. "Minnie! Where are ya?"

"Up here! Above you!"

He looked up—carefully, so that he wouldn't ram the back of his head into anything stabby—and spotted his girlfriend, still trapped in the orb, which was nestled into a nook near where the "wall" of briars curved over to become the "ceiling." Three or four thornless stems were wrapped across the globe's front, holding it in place. Much to Mickey's relief, Minnie appeared completely unharmed, although for some reason she was back in her Fantasyland princess gown. Maleficent had said something about dressing for the part…maybe this was her idea of a joke.

"I'll be right there, Minnie! Don't you worry about a thing!" He stretched his tail up toward the vine, found a safe spot between the thorns to curl it around, and let it take his weight so that he could free his robe. Then he began looking around to see if there was a sturdier branch within swinging reach.

"I am surprised at you," said Maleficent's voice, and this time the wicked fairy was present, standing on a platform of intertwined brambles that projected from the wall so that she could look down on Mickey. "Did you really think it would be so easy, here in this corner of Inpotentia that I have claimed as my own? Have you learned _nothing_, little mouse?"

"I warned you not to pick on him!" Minnie growled from her prison.

"_You_ stay out of this, _whelp_!" Maleficent growled back, sending a flick of lightning at the caged mouse. It didn't pierce the skin of the orb, but it danced over the surface, causing Minnie to shrink away.

"That's enough!" said Mickey. His tail was starting to ache. "Why do you have to be like this?"

"Come now, Mickey. Are we not all as we were made? Surely you don't think you play the hero because you have a _choice_ in the matter."

"Oh, no you don't. I'm not about to fall for a cliché like the old we're-not-so-different-you-and-I lecture. Now, are we gonna do this or not?"

"You seem awfully eager for your own destruction, Mickey," said Maleficent. "Far be it from me to _disappoint you_!"

With a grand gesture, she called forth her trademark green fire to engulf the vine. Mickey dropped almost on pure reflex, and fortunately on the way down he passed close by a clump with thorns large enough to be handholds in their own right. He caught one and swung himself around to land more-or-less on top of the clump with his feet wedged nicely between the huge spikes.

He looked up. Maleficent was already raining more fire down upon him. He dodged with a leap toward the next vertical stalk and climbed it like a ladder toward the Wicked Fairy. "So that's how you want it, huh?" he said, and from his innermost magical spirit he brought forth his own fire: the pure, white-hot fire of stars and comets. Balancing on the briar stalk, he hurled a shining cluster of it from each hand, one-two, and watched with satisfaction as Maleficent gasped and ducked aside to avoid it.

"So, Sorcerer's Apprentice," she hissed. "I see you wish to escalate this battle to its logical extent. As you wish…but do try to remember one thing."

"Oh? What's that?"

"This _still_ is not taking place in your imagination!" She raised her staff with both hands and drove the end of it into her platform of briars. Flames erupted around her and she began to change.

Mickey heard Minnie scream a warning, not that it was necessary. In truth, he had pretty much seen this coming, but that didn't make it any less alarming to watch the transformation. Maleficent _swelled_, as though converting the energy of the fire directly into extra mass. Already a creature of sharp angles, she became even more so, her face elongating into a fanged snout and her hands curving into talons. Her black and violet robes fused with her skin, clothing her in chitinous scales, and her neck grew to a serpentine length and sprouted a crocodilian saw-ridge. The whole process took less than a minute.

Maleficent-the-dragon stretched her wings and swished her tail, smashing some of the more brittle briar runners. She stood directly on the jagged floor of the arena enclosed by the plants, the thorns making no difference to her armored feet. She bent her head toward Mickey, and her jaws could have snatched him up and swallowed him whole. As he stared up at the multifariously deadly predator that his bitter foe had become, all Mickey wanted to do was run and hide, preferably in a comfy hole. But he stood his ground and forced his trembling to stay below the threshold of visibility…not that she couldn't probably hear his jackhammering heartbeat anyway.

"Heh," he said, his voice cracking a little. "I guess you feel like posing for some promotional material."

Maleficent snapped at him in annoyance, then pulled her head back and thrust it forward again, breathing a long plume of fire. But Mickey was already moving, scrambling back down the stalk toward the floor and looking for safe places to land. He ducked under an arched branch as Maleficent's teeth lunged at him again, then had to flee as she set the branch afire. Fortunately, the briars didn't seem to burn too well, and the green flames spread slowly. Mickey was pretty sure that Maleficent couldn't keep breathing fire indefinitely without stopping to recharge, but he had no idea how many shots she had left, or how long it would take her to recover.

As he scrambled for cover, he heard the telltale sign of another blast coming his way. This time, instead of dodging he spun about and countered with the white fire, and the two streams met in an explosion of fierce light and heat. Before it quite died away, Mickey was in motion again, picking his way across the hazardous floor. He knew he needed to formulate some kind of strategy, but the demands of surviving in the short term didn't leave him much room to plan for the long term.

With a shriek of rage, Maleficent slammed her tail against the ground just ahead of Mickey, creating a brief hail of thorny shrapnel. Mickey gasped and reversed course, only to pull up short again when she took a swipe at him with a taloned foot. Another blast of green fire followed, and Mickey found himself trapped between Maleficent's body on one side, and crackling flames on the other. The dragon chuckled darkly.

Mickey glanced up, toward Minnie. The globe containing her was rocking slightly in its basketlike bonds. If he could just get to her, he could free her, and the two of them could defeat or escape Maleficent together. Somehow.

Maleficent was gearing up for another direct attack. Mickey began preparing to counter it, but then got a better idea. He made a lightning dash for the end of her tail, seized one of the elongated scales at the tip with one hand and generated a blazing star-flame with the other, and made sure to let her see what he was doing. It worked—she whipped her tail upward, and he used the momentum to get a head start on a leap for the nearest wall. He caught a protruding runner a little over halfway up and began climbing higher, swinging and somersaulting, presenting his enemy with a moving target. He felt unusually light, as though gravity was slightly weaker than normal.

On the other hand, it might have been thermal updrafts. Maleficent was strafing the wall of thorns in her efforts to blast him, and although she was missing him so far, he could feel the wash of heat every time the flames approached. He was out of her direct reach by this point, leaving the fire as her only effective weapon. Mickey re-checked his position and discovered to his delight that he had only about twenty feet to go before reaching Minnie's prison.

But that instant of inattention cost him. As he prepared himself for the next leap, he suddenly found that his support was crumbling out from under him. Maleficent's fire had been slowly eating away at the brambles, and parts of them were collapsing into little heaps of charcoal and ashes, leaving the remainder to collapse into tangles of lacerating spines. Something below him snapped altogether, and Mickey plummeted…only to be slammed up against a mass of prickles and held there. The sudden shock of a hundred tiny stabbing pains made his eyes water, and it was a moment before he was able to absorb the fact that he was literally in Maleficent's clutches, being pressed into the thorns by her powerful claw.

He tried to call up the star-flame, but the imitation Sorcerer's Hat had gotten hung up on a large spine a few feet above him, and he found himself unable to summon up the power. The dragon began to open her jaws…

There was a sound like a huge lightbulb popping overhead, followed by a shrill cry, and then in a swirl of petticoats, Minnie landed on Maleficent's head. Ever since the battle had begun, she had been shoving and kicking inside the globe, trying to bump it into the big thorns behind it and shatter it, and she had finally succeeded.

Now, straddling the dragon's head just behind her horns, she reached around her face to grab the finlike appendages at the corners of her mouth, one in each hand, and began to bawl her out. "I _said_ to _leave_ him _alone_! _I—have—had—enough_ from you! _You_ can't even _patronize_ people right! A _whelp_ is a baby _dog_! A baby _mouse—is—a—__**pinky**_!" With every emphasized word, she gave the fins a sharp yank, eliciting a gasp of pain from their owner.

"All right, Minnie!" Mickey crowed. Maleficent let go of him and began to shake her head and paw at it, trying to knock Minnie loose. Mickey quickly climbed up to reclaim his hat, felt the power surge within him once again, and started pelting Maleficent with little shooting stars.

"Go, Mickey!" Minnie cheered, her voice wobbly with the motion. "Kick her fanny! Punch her lights out! Give her—" At that point, Maleficent managed to fling her away, and she went sailing helplessly toward a bank of briars with a scream of horror. A moment before she hit them, something caught the back of her dress and pulled her up, and she landed astride what proved to be the tail of an actual, whizzing comet. It was warm to the touch, but not uncomfortably hot. Mickey was sitting in front of her, doing his best to steer the thing. She clung to him. "Now what?"

"Well…I hadn't really thought that far ahead. To be honest, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this thing going."

"Maybe we should get off, then!"

"No, wait! I've a got a better idea!" He leaned back, and the comet angled upward. When they were only a few feet from the ceiling, he reversed course, aiming the unlikely vehicle straight for Maleficent. "Hey, Creepy!" he shouted, not that she wasn't already watching them. "Have some of the stuff that dreams are made of!" And just as gravity took over, he poured everything he had left into the comet.

"I just hope you know what you're do_iiiiing_!" Minnie squealed as the comet went turbocharged. Maleficent had just enough time to open her mouth for one last blast of fire, but not to release it, before the impact occurred.

Then everything turned to sound and pressure and _light_.

* * *

There was no telling how much time had passed before Mickey and Minnie were able to pull their senses back together, but when they did, they were floating, weightlessly adrift among splintered fragments of brambles and gossamer strands of blue-violent vapor. The explosion of the comet had shattered the entire arena! There was no sign of the castle, or the bridge, or any part of Disneyland-That-Never-Was.

Mickey paddled in the air until he reached Minnie's side. "Huh," he said with a nervous little chuckle. "I didn't see that coming."

"It's not over yet," said Minnie, pointing to a place a few dozen yards away where Maleficent could be seen, back in her original form and clinging wearily to a large knot of briars. She caught sight of them, and her eyes flashed with hatred.

"It is and she knows it," said Mickey. "She's just too stubborn to admit it." He raised his voice. "Come on, Maleficent! Let's all just go home and get back to business as usual."

But she didn't appear to be listening. Her attention was elsewhere. Mickey was just about to repeat himself when she began to cackle. The sound wasn't very loud at all, but there was nothing to muffle it; it just expanded outward unimpeded, so that it reached Mickey and Minnie seeming to come from much closer.

"It is coming," she said. "Your doom. Can you not sense it?"

"What are you talking about?" said Mickey. But a memory nagged, and with a feeling like he had swallowed a super-dense ice cube, he recalled the horror of his very first experience of Inpotentia, when for a fractional instant it had seemed that his very _being_ was disintegrating into the void. And now it seemed to him that the splintered bits of thorns were drifting in more-or-less the same direction, as though caught in a gentle current.

"An Oubliette, of course," Maleficent said as though that explained everything. "And it will be here within minutes. If only you had not disrupted my domain, we would all be shielded. But now all this space is unclaimed and vulnerable. Thus must I take my leave of you, little mice. My only regret is that I will not get to see your end for myself. Enjoy your last remaining moments…if you can!" And with that, she vanished in her customary fashion.

"Mickey…what's an Oubliette?"

"I'm not exactly sure. But if my hunch is right…it's bad. _Real_ bad."

"_How_ bad? You can tell me."

The general drift of the debris sped up a little, and Mickey and Minnie began to move along with everything else. "Like…we'll never have existed, and everyone will forget about us. _That_ bad."

"Oh," Minnie said, and although her voice was calm, Mickey recognized a note of growing panic in her eyes. "Can we escape?"

"I…I don't know. Maybe I can make a wind to push us—"

Just then, the Oubliette came into view.

Actually, it was more like it had suddenly arrived from behind the scenery. It seemed as if everything that was far enough away from their location to be considered background was a flat curtain, and someone had turned on a powerful vacuum hose behind the curtain, sucking it into a funnel shape and pulling everything on their side of the curtain toward it. Mickey was no astrophysicist, but he had read enough analogies involving rubber sheets and lead marbles to know that it was space itself—or what passed for space in Inpotentia—being deformed. And so he wasn't surprised—horrified, but not surprised—when his perspective shifted and he felt like he and Minnie were no longer being pulled along in a current but instead were _falling_ toward the vortex.

"Oh, _no_," Minnie moaned. "Mickey, what are we going to do?"

"I don't know," he said. Their speed continued to increase, and a wave of mingled fear and guilt sloshed through his mind. "Minnie…I am _so sorry_ about this. Maybe if I'd been smarter about fighting her—"

"_Don't_, please," said Minnie. "You did everything exactly right, exactly the way you should have. You're my hero, Mickey. You're everyone's hero, and a hero's story can't end like this!"

"I hope you're right," Mickey said as the two of them were swept into a tightening spiral orbit around the maw of the Oubliette. The pretend Sorcerer's Hat went whipping off of Mickey's head, and his Fairy Godmother-granted red robe dissolved back into his usual shorts. Minnie's satin gown, too, changed back into her simple polka-dot dress. "But just in case you're not, I just wanna say…I'd much rather fall into this thing with you than go back without you."

"Oh, Mickey, I feel the same way!" said Minnie, wrapping her arms around him. "But if I _did_ have to go back without you…well, you're the first thing I remember, and I'd _never_ forget you, no matter what!"

"Same here," said Mickey soberly. "In fact, if we really are about to disappear, I'll just keep thinkin' about you and nothing else right up until the end. That way, it'll be just like I remember you forever."

They were circling the rim of the funnel, dipping a little closer to oblivion with every lap. "Then I'll do the same," said Minnie, hugging Mickey as tightly as she could.

And the two mice, so close together that they were almost one being, dropped into the Oubliette.

* * *

The rope had dropped, and hundreds, maybe thousands of guests were arriving at the Plaza Hub. They stopped when they saw the characters gathered in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle and stood there uncertainly, whispering amongst themselves, apparently taking the tableau for the setup to a show. A few people audibly commented on Mickey's absence.

In a burst of thunder and green flames, Maleficent appeared once again on the parapet. "Poor children," she scoffed at the gathering. "Waiting for your _precious_ hero's return. Well, you'll never see him or his 'sweetheart' again…and soon, you won't even remember that they ever existed. What then, I wonder, will become of all of you, and all of this?" She gestured negligently at the park in general. "You're all _nothing_ without him!" Somewhere in the crowd of guests, a small child began to wail.

Glowing red with fury, Tinkerbell zipped up out of the gathering and flew at Maleficent's face repeatedly; her shrieks were like clanging cymbals. Maleficent swatted her away with a sneer of contempt, but she did not relent, and with their own battle-cries, the warriors and magicians among the characters charged. The Wicked Fairy found herself under onslaught by spells, arrows, and finally swords, among other things.

And then the guests got into the act, jeering and booing. When some of the bolder children resorted to throwing things, Maleficent decided she had had enough. "Resist all you want, _fools_—it won't make the least difference!" she spat. Then she twisted into a sliver of darkness in the air and disappeared.

"What did she mean, we won't remember Mickey and Minnie ever existed?" asked Goofy. "How could we forget _them_?"

"She must have done something _dreadful_ to them!" Fauna whimpered.

"We did forget all about her meddling and everyone who was missing before," said Alice. "Perhaps she's found a way to make that sort of thing permanent!"

"Well, _I_ won't forget!" piped Jiminy Cricket. "Mickey asked me to remember everything, just in case he or anyone else couldn't, and I intend to follow through!" With a few swift movements, he hopped to the center of the Hub and scaled the bronze statue of Walt Disney. Perched at the very tip of the founder's outstretched hand, he addressed the characters and astounded guests alike. "Hey there, hi there, ho there! We all want to see Mickey again, don't we? And Minnie?"

"Yeah!" shouted a few kids.

"Well, we can't forget about anyone or anything as long as we're _thinking_ about them! So everyone—let's think about Mickey and Minnie and hold that thought! It might just be enough to bring them back from wherever Maleficent has sent them!"

"That's the stuff!" shouted Donald, elbowing his way to the front of the group of characters. "Remember Mickey! Remember why he's _worth_ remembering!"

For a few minutes, no one said anything. The guests seemed uncertain—they weren't used to _this_ level of audience participation. But then a little boy of about seven, wearing his very own mouse ears and a faux-vintage Mickey tee-shirt, raised his hand like he had been taught to do in school, and said "I remember how Mickey Mouse never gives up even when he thinks he can't win, and that's how come he does. Win. Um…that's all." He backed up a few steps and clung to his parents, suddenly shy.

But shy or not, he had broken the ice. Next, a frail old man in a wheelchair spoke of his boyhood in the Great Depression when even a quarter to spare was a rarity, but whenever he had one, he would head down to the cinema for a day, and gorge his funny bone on Mickey's old short subjects. "He always took my mind off my troubles."

Then a thirty-ish woman wearing a souvenir Sorcerer hat credited Mickey's appearance in _Fantasia_ with introducing her to classical music when she was small, and said that no matter how old she got, the curious, adventuresome Sorcerer's Apprentice would always be her favorite member of the Disney Family.

Then a father and son, the one in late middle age, the other looking fresh out of college, reminisced about Mousercizing together on weekends while the son was growing up. "I was kind of a couch potato as a kid," he confessed, "but Mickey made aerobics fun."

The floodgates were open and the stories poured forth, from people of all age groups and ethnicities. One family who had traveled all the way from Iran and spoke only Farsi still managed to cheer "Yay, Mickey!" in unison, having learned it from old episodes of "The Mickey Mouse Club." A smiling young woman in well-traveled clothes including an eccentric aviator's scarf and goggles referred to Mickey as the "universal ambassador" because no matter where she went in the world, she found people who loved him. A couple in their late teens, wearing wild Goth clothing and makeup, pulled up their sleeves to reveal their complementary tattoos, his of Mickey, hers of Minnie, so that when they lined up their arms just right, the mice appeared to be kissing. A slightly older couple, the man handling a stroller containing their two-year-old daughter and the woman visibly pregnant with a second, related that Disney shorts and movies were the best cure for morning sickness they had ever discovered.

Eventually, some voices near the back of the crowd began to chant, repeating Mickey and Minnie's names over and over with gradually increasing speed and volume. It didn't take long for the whole throng to join in, and then the characters themselves. When hundreds of hearts and minds are all focused toward a single goal, a kind of energy is raised. No manufactured instrument can measure it, but it exists and can be felt, and on that day in the Happiest Place on Earth, it manifested as tiny motes of golden light, all but invisible in the daylight, rising up from the chanters and gathering over Sleeping Beauty Castle like pixie dust in reverse. There was a sense of building pressure, felt by everyone even if most of them didn't know what it was.

Finally, Jiminy belted out "Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?"

With one voice, the crowd replied "_M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!_"

A momentous sensation, like a non-physical shockwave, swept over the Hub. Simultaneous with that, the tiny specks of light suddenly coalesced into a shimmering shape in the air, slowly descending toward the Castle drawbridge. The golden glow faded, revealing the shape to be in fact two shapes, so close together that they shared a single outline: Mickey and Minnie, arms wrapped around each other as though their embrace was the only way to avert the end of the world. When they touched down on the drawbridge, they seemed not even to notice…until the watching guests erupted in cheers.

At the sudden noise, the two mice jumped, looked around, took in the scene, and went right back to hugging.

There was no need for words. It was all over but the celebrating.

It was truly the Happiest Homecoming on Earth.

The End…? (Not Quite)

_A/N: I didn't actually get to go to Disneyland the day they kicked off the 50th Anniversary Celebration, but I couldn't resist…I put myself in the crowd scene. Can you guess which one I am? It shouldn't be too hard. Most of the other individual people aren't based on anyone I know; they're just theoretical examples of Mickey fans across the nations and the generations. (There is one, though, who is not my own creation.)_

_Oh, and I put all of you, my readers, in the scene too. Where, you ask? Well…you guys are the ones who start the chant._

_Are you ready for the epilogue? I've uploaded it too._

_(For the record, I know comets are not really fiery, more the opposite, but just go with it, okay?)_

_—Karalora_


	33. Chapter 33

Crowns of the Kingdom

Epilogue

Maleficent staggered into her throne room, quivering with excitement at the thought of what she had done.

But what had she done, exactly?

She thought about it for a moment and concluded that she did not actually _care_ as such. Maybe the end of Mickey Mouse would mean the end of all the rest of them, maybe they would go on with an explicable hole in their collective memory, maybe, once again, she had even failed altogether…it didn't matter. Past a certain point, results are no longer important; it's the wicked thought that counts.

It was dark inside the lair, the green-burning torches extinguished. Something rustled in the shadowed corners. "Is that you, pet?"

Flames flared, but they were blue, not green. Maleficent gaped, disbelieving, at the grinning form of Hades, Lord of the Dead. "'Pet,' huh?" he said, gliding forward. "That's, what, my new nickname? It's snappy, I like it." His expression darkened. "Babe, we gotta have us a little talk about your tactics. Right, folks?"

He snapped his fingers, and the torches came up, revealing no small number of hostile faces belonging to other Villains. Foremost among them were Hades's compatriots from the past ten years, but as Maleficent rose from her throne in outrage, she also spotted Cruella, Jafar, Prince John, and several others who had been wronged by her spell.

She sat back down and grit her teeth. It was going to be a long, painful day.

* * *

It had been a long, wonderful day. And the evening wasn't over yet.

Mickey and Minnie had terrific seats for the fireworks…on the roof of the Main Street Photo Center. They decided they were entitled to cheat a little—even after their ordeal, they had spent the day greeting guests and making their visit as magical as it could be (despite having given themselves a tough act to follow). So now they were claiming the best of both worlds—a fantastic view of the Castle, Main Street, and Tomorrowland, without the chance of being noticed and pestered for more autographs. They had a blanket to sit on and sodas and sandwiches, and could not have asked for more.

"I need to phone Bob tomorrow," said Mickey, "and see about getting Oswald back in the family. It's the least we can do for him after all he did for us."

"Mickey Mouse, I am with you one hundred percent. In fact, I'll stand by to ring up his second line in case he gives you any grief."

"Aww…you're the best, Minnie!"

"I guess we deserve each other, then," she said with an impish wink. "To us?"

"To us!"

They tapped their Coke bottles together and settled back to wait for the fireworks to begin.

"Say, Mickey…?" Minnie said after a moment.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think happened to Hypatia and the other friendly Dispirations?"

Mickey mulled it over. "I couldn't even begin to guess. But if they ever turn up again, let's invite 'em to stay. As long as they behave themselves, of course. Disneyland can always use more good ideas!"

The lights around the Plaza Hub began to dim and the first strains of a joyful fanfare sounded from the audio speakers. The two mice leaned against each other in a state of perfect contentment as the first sparkling rockets went up.

* * *

Elsewhere in the park, on another rooftop and equally unseen by the crowds, the one spoken of was also watching the show.

She was alone again; the others had all abandoned their forms and dispersed into the general ambience of the park. Orphaned ideas, without shape or purpose, just as they had been before encountering Maleficent…only now they would have chances every day to find receptive minds and be reborn properly. And in the meantime, they would be there, participating in Disneyland's mission to spread joy among its guests. They were still waiting to strike…no longer as Dispirations, but _Inspirations_.

Hypatia was justifiably proud of her work in bringing them around, even though it hadn't taken much persuading. (Maleficent herself had observed that they were rather like children, without considering what that implied for their collective outlook on Disneyland and the Disney Family once they discovered what it was all about.) She had fancied herself a hero, and made the fancy come true. But now the adventure was over, and she was tired. And maybe the world wasn't quite ready yet for an idea that got ideas of its own and brought them into reality.

So she spread her wings and flew away from the rooftop and into her own imagination.

The End

_

* * *

_

A/N: And so it ends, after more than three years since the first chapter was posted. It's pretty amazing to think that I started writing this while Disneyland's 50th Anniversary Celebration was still going on…and now it's nigh time for the 55th Anniversary. I think if I had it to do over again, I would try to make it a little shorter, cut some of the extraneous stuff and reduce the parts that are necessary but drag.

_It's been a fantastic trip through my own nostalgia for Disneyland, as well as the vicarious nostalgia I get from reading about rides and such that were long gone before I ever set foot in the place. But beyond that, it's been immensely gratifying to see just how many people have enjoyed reading it. It isn't often that I meet anyone who loves the Disney theme parks to the same extent I do—as potential stories in and of themselves rather than simply shallow entertainment (not that there's anything inherently wrong with shallow entertainment)—and here, a bunch of you came to me! I cannot reiterate enough how thrilling it has been to see my e-mail inbox full of reviews after posting each chapter._

_For that reason, if no other, I'm kinda sorry to have reached the end. With any luck, this won't be the last you hear from me on the Disney front, but for now, I think I'm going to take a break from fanfiction. Three years is a long time to be on the hook for updates, even willingly._

_Peace. And feel free to keep in touch!_

_—Karalora_


End file.
